A Triangle of Many Sides: Book Two
by Scribbler
Summary: The Nibelheim Incident sparks a crisis for Cissnei, who is left the task of protecting Aerith while also dealing with her unrequited feelings for Zack. When Tseng sends them on the run, Cissnei must risk everything to protect Aerith for the next nine months. Meanwhile, Zack and Cloud fight to keep their sanity in the labs while the Turks fight their own battles with their pasts.
1. Zack: Mentor

**Disclaimer:** Expansively not mine.

**A/N:** This is Book Two of a series of three fics called 'A Triangle of Many Sides' (as you may have noticed from the title). Book One dealt with pre-canon, Book Two will feature what I affectionately call the 'hidden stories' we didn't get to see during-canon, and Book Three will deal with the post-canon timeline that directly follows the events of the fic you're reading right now. Book One was really a series of one-shots that connected only very loosely, but which laid some groundwork for Book Two. Consider it a giant prologue for what's to come. Books Two and Three have a much clearer storyline to follow.

Basically, this is my BUT HOW DID THAT EVEN WOOOOORK? fic that attempts to make some of the more sprawling aspects of the FFVII universe make sense (e.g. Where the hell did Cissnei go after Crisis Core? Cloud's Dad – MIA, dead or an alien from the Planet Zog? How did Zack and Angeal first meet? AWOL Turks of Before Crisis, where are you? And Kunsel. Just ... Kunsel as a whole. Who is he, where did he go, how the hell did he know so much and why didn't he become a super-villain because of it? Kunsel vexes me greatly).

All I can say at this juncture is: give it a chance to make sense and it will. Oh, and thank you for reading.

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><p><strong>1. Zack: Mentor<strong>

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><p>Zack swept the sword down at an angle that would've decapitated Cloud, had he still been there. His speed was much improved, Zack reflected, bringing the blade up and bunching his muscles under him in a leap designed to bring him in close.<p>

Swordplay was, by definition, more effective at close range. Long-range was for snipers and assassins, not SOLDIERS. Throw a sword at an opponent like an arrow and it kind of defeated the point, especially if you missed, though he'd seen desperate men do it before. Zack hoped – no, he _intended_ – never to give up his sword unless there really was no other option, and even then he anticipated going to fetch the thing back afterwards. Neither rain, nor wind, nor stinky monster guts would keep him and Angeal's last gift apart for long.

He thought briefly about his mentor as Cloud dodged his attack. Not so long ago it'd been Zack doing the dodging and getting his ass handed to him. Now he was the more experienced and used all the tricks he'd learned in Wutai to try and trick Cloud into making a mistake. He was faster and stronger, the mako in his blood giving him an edge, but Cloud had gotten wily. He was also less easily distracted than Zack had been when Angeal first took on his training, which meant he'd learned more theory in the same amount of time.

Cloud feinted and faked and generally tried to skip out on facing Zack directly because that would be suicide. Smart move. Still doomed to failure, though. Cloud's tactics were like wolves attacking prey bigger than them – dash in, slash, then get away again before it had time to react. It was classic dripping-water-on-stone strategy, designed to wear an opponent down or frustrate them into making a fatal error. In a group like a wolf pack this was fine, but one on one? Not so much.

_Time to bring this one home_.

Zack hadn't been holding back, per se, but he hadn't exactly been cutting loose. He didn't cut loose now, either, since a First Class cutting loose could level a building and reduce a grunt like Cloud to a greasy stain on the ground. Zack liked Cloud. He didn't want to turn him into a greasy stain. For one thing, it'd be difficult to replace someone so honest and eager to please, plus he'd only just got the guy trained in the fine art of How Zack Likes His Coffee.

Zack pushed off, put on a burst of speed and came in under Cloud's defences. Spooked by Zack's sudden appearance, Cloud made the mistake of moving his blade from a defensive to an offensive position, leaving his chest exposed on the upswing.

Zack could've easily angled his own sword around in a perfect stab through the heart. Instead, he hooked one heel behind Cloud's legs and tripped him up in a basic manoeuvre. Cloud tried to save himself with a handspring, but with Zack so close it was no use. He landed flat on his back, sword-arm outstretched, and flinched when Zack's sword thrust into the floor next to his head.

"Thus endeth the lesson," Zack smiled.

Cloud blinked up at him. A frustrated noise lurked in his throat and his forehead furrowed. "I did it again."

"Yeah, but you lasted longer this time."

"I can't believe I made the same mistake _again_." Cloud was breathing hard, but Zack still heard the anger in his voice. "I always lose it when my defences are breached. I should _know_ by now how to react when that happens."

"Don't be too hard on yourself, buddy –"

"I'll bet you never made simple mistakes like that."

"Are you kidding? Angeal used to say my head was made of layers of titanium netting – everything took twice as long to find a way in and even longer to stay there."

Cloud grunted.

Zack rolled his eyes. Honestly, Cloud could be so obsessive sometimes. "Look, let's put this in perspective: me, a First Class SOLDIER who's had to hack up more than a few monsters to keep them from shredding his devilishly handsome face; you, a normal guy with basic training and no mako in you. Kind of like swatting a fly with a tank. Under those circumstances, you did pretty good."

"Thanks for reminding me." Cloud rolled sideways. The fact he wasn't yet a SOLDIER of any class was still a sore point. "Were you even trying?"

"A little." Zack grinned. "You nearly made me break a sweat."

Anybody else would've replied with a well-deserved, "Asshole," but Cloud just looked at him with an expression that implied it. He was always so polite, a proper little country boy with manners inscribed right down to his bone marrow. It had taken months for Zack to chisel away that veneer to the person underneath, who thought and felt and had opinions of his own.

Then Zack reflected that he was also a country boy and had learned the hard way to be more respectful to his superiors than, say, shortening their names to just initials and giving a thumb's up instead of a salute. Hm, maybe it was a northerner thing.

"Seriously though," he said, attempting to bolster his friend's confidence – or at least bandage his pride, "you're improving."

"Humph."

"You _are_. You nearly hit me a couple of times today, and you're definitely a lot faster than you used to be. Lighter on your feet, too. Some of these outcroppings are narrow." He gestured at the solid-holograms surrounding them. "I'll bet if it was you against another SOLDIER he'd get a shock at how good you are for an infantryman."

"Yeah, right before he separated me from my lungs." Cloud was pragmatic and, Zack felt, unreasonably downbeat. Yeah, probably another SOLDIER _would_ kill him, and probably it _would_ be messy, and more than a bit painful, but did he have to be so gloomy about it?

"Hey, if you'd rather not do this anymore…" Zack left the sentence hanging.

Cloud quickly shook his head. "No, I … sorry, that was ungrateful. I do appreciate you giving me extra training like this."

"Damn skippy." Technically, ordinary grunts weren't allowed into the VR Chambers. Shinra was careful with its finances and didn't like the idea of expensive equipment being ruined by men whose future might be in cannon fodder. Still, Zack was a First Class and that came with certain privileges; like being able to use the rooms whenever he wanted, provided they hadn't been booked in advance, borrow extra swords from the equipment stockpile and not be questioned afterwards as long as he didn't damage anything. "You're too hard on yourself. You need to take time off sometimes from being such a perfectionist."

"Easy for you to say. You're a natural at this."

"Pfft." Zack made a noise like the whoopee cushion he used to sneak onto Angeal's chair before important meetings. "Much as I like the mystique that gives me, I have to reply with a big fat 'yeah right!' I've had more injuries from training than you've had hot dinners. Plus I was in a war. You learn fast in those sorts of circumstances. These skills are hard won." He struck a pose. "I've suffered for my art, and I didn't even have a good friend like me to smooth out my rough edges before I got myself a mentor."

"What about Second Class Wainwright?"

Zack paused. Cloud only knew Kunsel by reputation and seeing him around Shinra. As a Second Class, Kunsel had never undertaken sole training of any corps, and showed no interest in advancing to First, and the responsibilities thereof, anytime soon. He was an anomaly that way. Zack had been itching to advance to First almost as soon as he became Second, but Kunsel had languished on the lower tier for years and seemed perfectly happy to stay there. His friendship with Zack hadn't _suffered_, but they did see a lot less of each other than when they were both the same Class. Zack couldn't remember the last time they'd had an actual conversation, outside email, longer than it took to pass each other in the hall.

Still, Cloud was right. Kunsel had been there to see all the embarrassing rough edges Zack would rather forget, and had helped sand a few down as they both muddled their way through basic training. Maybe that was why Zack had decided to help Cloud when the poor guy failed his SOLDIER exam. He knew first-hand that sparring with someone was the best way to improve your skills.

"Don't worry, buddy. We'll make a SOLDIER out of you yet."

Cloud eyed him with suspicion, before allowing his face to relax. He looked much less like a human stress ball that way. Desire to get into the SOLDIER programme had etched lines into his face that weren't nearly as pronounced when Zack first met him, several years ago on that mission to the frozen north. And on that note, how many people could say their friendship _started_ with a helicopter crash?

You could bake potatoes in the sheer intensity of Cloud's wish to succeed. His continuing failure and dejection had inspired Zack to offer the odd sparring session to help hone his skills. Cloud had passion and drive, and saw entry into the SOLDIER programme as a way of gaining respect, but he wasn't a naturally gifted warrior. He was too focussed on what came next to fully process the here and now. He thought about the future a lot and the past not enough, since one seemed more attractive to him than the other, and that showed up in his fighting style. He always tried to think a few steps ahead and got tangled up in his own feet because of it.

Like today's match; he'd been so intent on anticipating Zack's attack that he'd neglected to shore up his defences before moving into what he thought was the best response. Zack had killed people before, but he wasn't needlessly bloodthirsty. Still, he didn't want his friend killed because he forgot to check an opponent was dead before turning his back on the guy.

To that end he'd kind of taken on Cloud's training as more of a mentor than just as a friend. Just a little. He was nowhere near Angeal's level, and the higher-ups didn't consider him capable of having an actual apprentice of his own yet, which might indicate certain things Zack didn't like to think about, but …

Thinking about his own mentor still hurt, but it was a dull ache, not the searing agony it had been at the beginning. Time didn't heal wounds, but it did put a buffer in place so you could get on with what needed to be done without feeling like you'd swallowed a razor blade.

"Are you seeing your lady friend tonight?" Cloud asked.

"'Lady friend'?" Zack echoed. "How old-fashioned are _you?_ She has a name, y'know."

Cloud shrugged. He was kind of uncomfortable about women, as though courtship was still a major issue with strict rules and shotguns at the end if you didn't follow them.

He didn't talk much about his past. Not unless he was badgered, which Zack was good at, so he'd gleaned that Cloud hadn't exactly been Mr. Popularity back home, and that his pre-enrolment dating record was slim-to-none. There had been a girl he liked, but Zack doubted their relationship had even made it to friendship, much less romance. Though much less uptight than he used to be, Cloud still seemed to think of girls as mysterious, unfathomable creatures, and would probably have an aneurysm if one he didn't already know came up and talked to him. One of these days Zack would have to introduce the guy to Aerith, maybe ask if she had a friend who could teach Cloud the error of his ways.

"So are you going to see her?"

"Yup." Zack easily swung his sword onto his back and reached to help his friend up.

Cloud sniffed. "You're going to shower first, right?"

"I should kick your ass for that."

"You already did."

"Touché. Wait, was that an actual joke?"

"Might've been."

Zack grinned. There was hope for Cloud yet. "C'mon. Let's get that sword back to the stores before you're arrested for theft of Shinra property and assaulting an officer."

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><p><em><strong>To Be Continued …<strong>_

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><p>.<p> 


	2. Rod: Turk

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><p><strong>2. Rod: Turk<strong>

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><p>The skin on the back of Rod's neck rippled. The air in this part of Sector Six tasted bitter and so dry it excavated his head. Coughing into his fist as a distraction, he flicked his gaze round and confirmed his suspicions. They were being watched.<p>

The kid in the alley ducked out of sight before Rod could get a proper look at his face. Rod squinted at the crowd around him, wondering whether it was worth cutting through them to follow. All he had to go on was a gut feeling, which wouldn't have been enough to convince Veld that he had just cause to get side-tracked from today's assignment. However, Rod put a lot of faith in gut feelings; plus Veld wasn't around to chew him out anymore. Tseng wouldn't like it, but he wasn't the chewing out kind –

"Hey, Rod." Fingers snapped in front of his face. "Ground Control to Rodriguez. Come in, Rodriguez."

"Quit it." He pushed the hand away. "Get outta my face, Naifu."

"Well _someone_ fell out the wrong side of the bed this morning." Naifu barely came up to his shoulder, but when she was pissed you knew about it. Right now she wasn't, but she wasn't pleased either. "Keep your head in the game. You've been jumpier than Reno trying to sit down after a three-bean burrito ever since we came down here. What's up?"

"Nothing."

"Don't give me that." She inclined her head at him. "Is it me? We aren't usually partnered together, but I didn't think going on an assignment with me was _that_ bad." She theatrically sniffed her armpits and shook her head. "Nope. Clean as a whistle. And I'm not sniffing anywhere else while we're in public. It would _completely _ruin the Ruthless Hard-Nosed Turk image I've got going."

Rod snorted. Naifu looked as ruthless and hard-nosed as a pixie. Fey-like and slender, with a clumsiness that usually made the room erupt with laughter when she landed on her ass, you'd never know she was the deadliest knife-thrower Veld ever recruited. Her entire personality was too playful to match the reputation of the Turks, but she stuck to the most important rule Veld had drummed into them from their first day: Turks always got the job done. Veld being gone now didn't change that.

She punched Rod in the shoulder. He didn't even sway. "Don't diss me!"

"I'm not dissing you, ditz."

"I am not a ditz!" She frowned, following his flickering gaze. "_You_ are acting way weird, though. What's up?"

"I told you; nothing."

Her frown deepened. A pensive looked crossed her face. "Which Sector did you used to live in?"

He didn't look down at her. "Six."

"Oh crap."

"It's fine. Let's move it before we're late. Don Corneo's probably waiting for us."

"Hardly. That fat gut likes to keep _us_ waiting, no matter what time we arrive. It really winds Tan up –" She stopped. The reason they had been partnered together today rose like a hidden rake she had stepped on. Her chin dropped onto her chest as she walked.

Rod stuck his hands deep in his pockets. They all had pasts, which they talked about with varying degrees of reticence. For all her light-heartedness, the quickest way to make Naifu clam up was to ask about the life she used to lead in Old Corel before she became a Turk. He talked about his motorcycle gang only slightly more.

Tan had been one of Corneo's bodyguards before he was a Turk. It was why, after Veld got Corneo's assassins to back off the guy for deserting, Tan had been put on Sector Six detail as a show of good faith. Don Corneo traded information with Shinra's administrative department, but the relationship was tenuous at best. He demonstrated he was on the level by not killing Tan whenever he and his partner were sent to Wall Market to collect from him. Shinra paid for Corneo's services, but reminded him who was really in charge by parading The One Who Got Away at every opportunity.

That is, until Tan got himself killed while searching for another deserter: Genesis Rhapsodos.

Veld always taught his Turks not to get too attached to each other and not to linger over death – death they made happen, death they found while on the job, or any death that shrank their own ranks. Nevertheless, you got attached to your partner – or at least the person you were partnered with most. Reno and Rude were the prime example of when it worked. Helena and Richie, too. Tan and Naifu hadn't been partners for long, but they'd been headed the road of Successful Match-Up when Tan was sent out after the runaway SOLDIER with a newbie who was such a hit with the ladies he was known only as The Player. Neither of them came back. It had hit Naifu hardest, though she hid it well.

Rod and Tan hadn't been friends. Rod wasn't really friends with anyone. He had abandoned the people he called friends when Veld offered him a place in the Turks. Rodriguez Motero grew up in Midgar and fought his way from cradle to adulthood. He fought to survive, to get respect, to keep lowlifes off his back and to get to the top when he joined a gang that shared his love of motorcycles. Until he joined the Rage Riders he had been fine on his own. Then he got to know what it was like when people had your back, and realised he kind of liked it. Almost as much as he liked being the best at whatever he did. Yet when it came down to it, being the best had won out over the gang-mates who called him friend.

And leader.

He wasn't proud of leaving, but after he tried to rob Shinra and Reno caught him, Rod had received the worst thrashing of his life. He had known then that he had to better himself any way he could. The humiliation was total. There was no other option; not for him. If he was to regain any dignity, he had to recover from that humiliation in his own way.

He had told the gang he was leaving to get stronger. He hadn't just run out on them without a word. He had even placed his second in charge. Alejandro was a good guy, with all the right qualities to be a good leader. He was tough and he knew Sector Six. Moreover, he knew how to survive there. Even so, as Rod walked out the door of their pad, he had known even that the burning between his shoulder-blades meant nothing good. The feeling of being followed now made it worse. He had upped his game a _lot_ since he was eighteen, so he figured he could whoop the ass of anyone who tried something. Punk kids from a Midgar slum were nothing compared to the scum he had faced since joining up.

"That's the fourth time I've seen that boy," Naifu said pleasantly. Did nothing get this kid down? "I think we're being tailed. And by someone who's really, really bad at it. Too young to be one of Don Corneo's flunkies, but he has tatts."

A lot of Corneo's employees were recruited from gangs, and so still carried the facial tattoos that had marked their loyalties. Tan had been a gang member before he was tempted onto Corneo's payroll. His wild shock of dark hair and the black stripe down his cheek had made him a distinctive face in Shinra's corridors. Rumour had it that his rivalry with Reno stemmed from Reno being pissed that the mystique about his own tatts had been ruined when Tan arrived and explained what they were for.

Tatts. Well that was a relief. At least that meant it wasn't a Rage Rider following them. Rod had resisted the tattoo thing, he said at the time because it made you a target the moment you hit the street. Later he wondered whether he had just been keeping his options open to leave with the least amount of fuss. If you wore tatts you were a gangbanger for life. If you didn't, you could be anything. You could keep reinventing yourself without the vestiges of your old life holding you back.

You could take off a suit easier than you could remove a tattoo. Would he leave the Turks someday? If a better offer came along, maybe; but that was a dangerous mental boulevard, and one he didn't need to stroll down right now. For the moment the Turks were right for him, and he was right for them. He'd be the best Turk he could be, or die trying. He _had_ to be the best.

Naifu had one fist bunched. That meant she had palmed a miniature knife from her stash. Rod wondered where she kept them all. That tiny body didn't offer much room for weaponry, but she never seemed to run out.

"We're here," he muttered. They had reached the Honeybee. Time to go to work.

"Oh goody." Naifu pulled a face. "I just lurrrrve starting my day by being ogled. Although …" She looked speculatively at Rod. "Maybe with you here Corneo will keep his paws to himself. I had to waste a perfectly good throwing needle shattering the light to make him stop last time. He thought it was an electrical surge, but it was actually just to stop Tan doing something stupid. He got some weird ideas about honour and girls sometimes." For a nanosecond her expression wavered. Turks weren't supposed to mourn. Death was a part of the job and Turks always got the job done. Her face righted itself a moment later. "Ugh. All that quivering flesh." She shuddered. "Like a bowlful of jelly – if jelly keeps a gun in its pants to make itself look larger and more of a bad-ass."

"More than I needed to know about Corneo," Rod muttered.

"You and me both. I just hope someday the guy shoots off his own whoosit."

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><p><strong>Side-flings, Homages and Downright Rip-offs<strong>

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><p><em><strong>Rodriguez Motero grew up in Midgar and fought his way from cradle to adulthood.<strong>_

- Motero is Spanish for 'biker' (according to Babelfish).

The more unfamiliar characters here are actually from Before Crisis. Images of them can be found at finalfantasy (dot) wikia (dot) com (slash) wiki (slash) List (underscore) of (underscore) Before (underscore) Crisis (underscore) (dash)Final (underscore) Fantasy (underscore) VII(dash) (underscore) Characters. The Turk known simply as Rod in the game is also Rod here. Naifu is Knife (female), Tan is Two Guns (male), Helena is Gun (female), Richie is Nunchaku (male) and The Player is … well, the player of BC.


	3. Zack: Boyfriend

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><p><strong>3. Zack: Boyfriend <strong>

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><p>Aerith was in her church. It was where she and Zack always met, a neutral ground since her mother had some grudge against Shinra and nearly had apoplexy after the first time she met him and saw his uniform.<p>

He wore it because there were politics under the Plate the same as there were in any city. Though Shinra liked to ignore it, the slums were still a society and had evolved their own rituals and customs. If you didn't live there, you were an outsider; if you were an outsider you were fair game for anyone desperate or bitter enough to leave you dead and empty-pocketed in an alley. At least the SOLDIER uniform gave advanced warning not to try it. Zack figured it was as much for potential muggers' safety as his own.

Aerith didn't have such problems. True, life in the slums was still dangerous for her, but she'd grown up there. She knew her way around the unwritten rules and her new role as flower girl gave her a certain amount of additional protection. If an outsider threatened her then the loose community of Section Five would close around her, shielding their little flower girl and the light she brought into their lives. Midgar was harsh, but even those below the Plate appreciated flowers – especially if it meant the prospect of a good fight. It was one of the reasons Zack could be seen out with her without worrying _too_ much about her being punished for associating with a 'Shinra pet'.

"Hey," he said, pushing open the heavy door. "Aerith?"

Her head popped up from behind a pew. Obviously she hadn't been able to resist tending her precious plants while she waited. "Zack!" She jumped to her feet and ran at him.

Laughing, he scooped her up and swung her tiny body around in a circle. She weighed practically nothing anyway, but his enhanced strength made her feel even more like a rag-doll in his arms. Her laughter mingled with his as she gripped tight and squealed for him to stop. After walking through the filthy streets, Aerith's smile was like sunshine cutting through smog – likewise her hug when he finally did set her down.

"What a welcome!"

"That's nothing," she beamed, standing on tiptoe to press her lips to his. It was a chaste kiss and short. She pulled back first, embarrassed, but Zack just grinned.

"Okay, I take it back. That's a proper welcome."

"Silly." She stepped away from him and went to collect her basket. "So are you ready to go?" Yet another way for him to be more accepted as her boyfriend – by making sure people associated his face with the joy and hope of her flowers, not the fear and revulsion usually connected to Shinra. That'd been Aerith's idea, and he was happy to go along with it.

"Sure." He offered her his arm, but she playfully smacked him away.

"I can walk by myself. C'mon, I thought we could start at the park today."

Not that the mishmash of pipes and concrete was anything like a park in the traditional sense, but the wide space was one of the only places kids could play and not worry about buildings collapsing on them. Maybe someday someone would erect real playthings there. Zack imagined pushing Aerith on a swing. The image wasn't unappealing.

"Sure, whatever."

They talked as they walked. Aerith was a good conversationalist, even if she sometimes leaned towards flights of fancy. Still, it was good to have dreams. Zack knew that better than most. She told him about what she'd been up to since he saw her last, apologising that her life must be so boring compared to his. Zack disagreed. Sometimes he longed for a life where 5 a.m. training regimes were somebody else's problem.

They kept talking when they reached the park, and as people came up and bought Aerith's flowers. She had some sort of yellow things today; Zack was awful at telling one plant from another. Aerith was dedicated to learning as much about each one as she could, but Zack had been to Wutai where things grew like they couldn't stop.

Maybe if things ever quietened down properly he'd take Aerith there, he reflected. He had leave, and money saved, and gods knew she deserved time away from the slums. She'd probably like the countryside, and it'd sure be a change from Midgar, where inside was a sunless dump and outside was a desert wasteland. Not exactly the best place to learn about plant-life, though Zack did try. He liked seeing the little smile Aerith got when he was Making an Effort, even if it was usually followed by Zack Messed Up Again. When he was dispatched on his last residential service he brought back an interesting vine, only for her to tell him it was Poison Ivy. The resilience he got from SOLDIER treatments prevented it from affecting him (in her words, he'd have to be dumped in a vat of the stuff to develop a single spot), but it gave her a rash that made her ban him from seeing her for a week, even though he said sorry.

"Are you going away again soon?" Aerith asked, as if reading his mind.

"About due to be dispatched somewhere," he admitted. "No clue where, though. Wutai's pretty quiet and the higher-ups are cagey about everywhere else." He probably shouldn't be talking to her about this stuff, but who was she going to spill it to?

Aerith paused. Zack took a few steps before stopping too.

"I worry about you when you go away," she said softly.

"Hey, no frowny face. There's no reason for frowny face." Zack linked his arms behind his head, self-conscious. "It's part of the job."

"I know that. But…" She raised her eyes to his. "You're not exactly the most careful person in the world. You take silly risks, so I worry."

"I'm not an idiot."

She raised an eyebrow, expression sliding from anxious to unconvinced.

"Hey! I'm not!"

"Maybe not," she conceded, "but sometimes you do seem to have the self-preservation instinct of a lemming."

Zack's mouth fell open. That was … pretty good, for Aerith. "You wound me."

Aerith giggled. Then her face became serious again. "Zack, promise me. Promise me you'll take care." The sudden earnestness in her voice put him on his guard.

"What brought this on?"

"Nothing."

"Don't lie. I've been away on missions before and you've never gone this grim – especially since I haven't even been given the order to move out yet. C'mon, what's up?"

She looked away. "It's stupid-"

"Try me."

"I had … a dream."

"A _dream?_"

"See, I told you it's stupid-"

"No, wait. Go on." Zack was interested despite himself.

Aerith fixed him with a reproachful look. "Just trust me, okay? I had a dream, it wasn't nice, and now I want you to promise me you won't do something really stupid that'll get you hurt – or worse."

Zack looked hurt. "I know I'm not perfect, but I'm not suicidal, either."

"You push yourself," Aerith said firmly, and with far more conviction than should've been possible, considering she'd never seen him in the field. "You're still trying to prove yourself to someone. You want to be a hero, but heroes get hurt, Zack. I don't want you to get hurt…"

Angeal's face briefly surfaced in Zack's mind, followed closely by Sephiroth. Okay, so maybe there was some credence to what she was saying, but still … he was a First Class SOLDIER. He could handle himself.

Evidently his face communicated this, because Aerith stepped towards him, laying a hand flat against his chest. Usually it was him initiating contact when they weren't being playful. Zack looked down at her hand and back at her face, noting the intense tilt of her eyebrows and the way her lips bunched a little in the middle as she willed him to say what she wanted.

He sighed. Damn him for not being able to resist her. "Okay, okay, I promise not to take unnecessary risks that'll get me maimed, mangled or killed."

Aerith pouted. "You don't sound very sincere."

"What do you want from me? It may all be moot anyhow. I may be relegated to Midgar for another six months training recruits, and you," he jabbed a finger that just brushed the tip of her nose, "may just be stuck with me."

She smirked. "Such a chore."

"You better believe it. I'm the kind of Shinra pet that needs constant attention. And lots of cuddles. Among other things." He leaned close but she pushed him away, conscious of where they were and the interested faces directed their way.

"Zack!" she hissed.

Zack sighed. He was allowed to sell her flowers and push her cart but not kiss her in public. How unfair was that? What was it that had made him fall for a girl with so many strings attached? He'd never have had this problem if he'd married a girl from Gongaga like everyone always assumed he would.

Yeah right. Gongaga girls could heft a baby under each arm and still chase you down the street to smack you upside the head.

"To be continued?"

Aerith jabbed her own finger against the tip of his nose. "Of course."


	4. Aerith: Dreamer

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><p><strong>4. Aerith: Dreamer<strong>

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><p>Aerith sometimes wished she could just tell Zack everything. He was a SOLDIER after all. If anyone could have an open enough mind to accept her whole story, it was him.<p>

Yet that SOLDIER issue was precisely the reason she felt she couldn't tell him, even in those moments she most wanted to – when explaining about the Cetra, her biological mother, and her connection with the Planet would be easier than leaving him in the dark to think she was just some whimsical girl who put too much faith in gut instinct. Much as she wanted him to understand her better, she didn't want to put him in a position where he had to choose between Shinra and herself, and if he knew the truth, and found out how long Shinra had been trying to bring her in … there were bound to be longstanding orders employees were supposed to follow if they came across her. Zack would have to follow them, and if he didn't …

It was just tempting fate. As long as Zack remained ignorant, he wouldn't have to choose.

And it was nice to be treated like a normal girl, with normal feelings, hopes and dreams of the future. Even her adoptive mother wasn't so great at that. With Zack, Aerith felt like she was allowed to be flippant and more superficial than the weight of the Planet in her mind suggested she should be. She could joke with him, have fun with him, be silly and give herself up to the fact she wasn't even out of her teens yet. For the brief time they spent together they were each allowed to be more … well, _human_ than other people in their lives expected them to be.

Still, when he looked at her like the way he did in the park, she wished she could just blurt it all out. Zack didn't give much weight to her bad feelings. That's all they were to him. In Zack's world, bad feelings could be the result of a spicy meal before you went to bed, or being overstressed, or any number of other mundane reasons. In Aerith's they were evidence of her heritage and taking them seriously was mandatory.

_It would be easier if I could actually understand them, though._

She lay in bed, too hot and restless to sleep. And, she privately admitted, she didn't want another nightmare. She'd slept badly for a whole week, and last night had been even worse.

The recurring swirls of images and emotions always made her wake up feeling sick. She didn't remember a lot of what she saw when she woke, and what she did remember she didn't understand, except that it frightened her and _wasn't_ just because of a spicy meal. All she really knew was that something evil was there when she closed her eyes. It spewed darkness like a geyser. It wasn't attacking, but the danger it radiated was ever-present and nauseating. It didn't matter if you tried to run, it would still reach you. Everything loathsome, everything dangerous, everything you'd ever been afraid of as a child was there in that formless, unknown _thing_. She was never quite able to see it, but that just made it even more terrifying.

Those dreams had been bad enough, but last night Zack had also become a part of things somehow. Aerith had felt his presence, knew he was going to run forward and fight the thing, and knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that he must _not_. The risk was too big. He'd get hurt. The thing was too dangerous even for a SOLDIER – even for Zack, whose incredible reputation had permeated even as far as Sector Five. It may even be too big for General Sephiroth – and as soon as that realisation arrived Aerith had woken and rushed to the bathroom. She'd spent the rest of the night worrying, until she finally decided to try broaching the subject with Zack _without_ giving away her secrets.

Easier said than done.

She couldn't stop Zack from being sent away on a mission. Maybe it wouldn't matter even if she could. For all she knew, the danger was right here in Midgar, but at least here she could be close to him. If he got hurt, she could heal him. Shinra had their ways, but she trusted her own abilities more. Hadn't she fixed him up when he came crashing through the roof of the church?

She smiled at the memory even through her anxiety. No simple entrance for Zack. That would be too ordinary. And then offering to pay for the damage with a date, like she should be honoured he'd spend time with her! Yet his smile and the genuine delight when she agreed wiped away any irritation at his arrogance. You couldn't help but like Zack. It was almost genetically impossible _not_ to.

He had become so precious to her so quickly, despite a lifetime of keeping her personal connections small in case one of them accidentally – or deliberately – gave her away to Shinra. The betrayal of that would have been too much, but staying safe was a lonely business.

Zack had taught her that she didn't have to be so afraid all the time. If even a big tough SOLDIER, one of the bloodthirsty warriors she'd feared almost as much as the Turks, could be as nice as Zack, then maybe the world wasn't all that bad after all. Maybe one day she really would get out of Midgar and be able to live without constantly looking over her shoulder. Maybe even the last Cetra could have a life that was truly free, not just a reasonable facsimile. More than anything, Zack had taught her about hope. She'd defend that to the last.

Her, defend _Zack?_ As if.

Still, what was that story about a mouse chewing through the ropes that bound a snared lion? The weak didn't always have to be so passive. They could be just as useful as people who were powerful.

But what could she do? She'd relied on ducking and dodging for so long. Hiding was her way of life. She'd never considered fighting the Turks who periodically came to 'escort' her to Shinra as 'one of their guests'. She wasn't that stupid. Subterfuge and avoidance were much better weapons in that kind of conflict. In this, though … For the first time in her life, Aerith _wanted_ to fight. She wanted to be able to protect what was precious to her. The dreams made her feel helpless, and she hated the feeling. Maybe that was what they were for – the Planet warning her it was time to start taking action unless she wanted to lose what she loved.

At breakfast she managed only a piece of dry toast, and that at her mother's insistence. She still felt queasy after falling asleep and seeing the nightmare again. It had strengthened her resolve, if not her stomach. Under her mother's watchful eye, however, she ate every bite, feeling somehow that she owed that bit of compliance, since her destination this morning was somewhere her mother would have a fit about if she knew.

"You're very pale this morning. Are you feeling all right?"

A spasm of guilt jack-knifed through Aerith. "I'm fine. Didn't sleep well." She waved a vague hand. "Bad dreams." Easier to tell part of the truth than all of a lie.

"Perhaps you shouldn't go out today -"

"No, no! I mean … I'll be fine. I need to get out. You know I hate being cooped up." A leftover of years shut away in what amounted to a glass box so she could be prodded and poked until she cried. Aerith shivered inwardly. She remembered that part of her life all too clearly, despite only being a child at the time.

"Well … all right. But I'd like you to come home for lunch, at least. I could use the company."

"And you want to check up on me."

"Is that so wrong?"

"You fuss too much."

"I'm allowed to fuss. It's in the Mother's Handbook."

Elmyra loved her like they really were mother and daughter. Even when had Aerith felt most like a misfit, like she didn't belong and would only bring harm because of what she was, the woman's love and protection had never wavered. Elmyra knew that just living with Aerith was a risk – if not now, then one stored up for later, if Shinra ever grew tired of keeping her on the back-burner and tried to recapture her in earnest. Yet she'd never wavered in standing by her promise. Not even when she and Aerith made their way home by ducking behind carts, down alleys and skittering along flat rooftops to avoid being seen by idle Turks who sometimes came below the Plate to get their kicks and blow off steam.

Aerith hated keeping secrets from her mother even more than she hated keeping them from Zack, but this morning it was unavoidable.

Lady Keshoohin's wasn't far from her church. You couldn't hear the music at that distance, but the men who headed out that way from the built up areas of Sector Five went by a different route. They disliked going by a battered church if they were heading for a brothel. There was a kind of protection in the old guilt and saintly disapproval surrounding the place, which meant most of the Lady's girls passed by if they went out. The idea was that they'd be harassed less that way while they were off-duty. It didn't always work, though, which was how Aerith had found Kuchibeni so easily that time.

She'd only been fourteen, Kuchibeni three years older, but already with the look of someone much older. It wasn't the make-up or the way she dressed it, but the glint in her eyes that did it. All Lady Keshoohin's girls developed it over time – a hardness, like precious stones that glitter but absorb more light than they reflect. Regular street-walkers got a vacant stare, probably from imagining themselves anywhere but where they were, or else from whatever drugs they used to anaesthetise themselves against the truth of their lives. Lucid was the latest culprit, but anything to take the edge off was rife in the slums. Those who caught the Lady's eye enough for her to bring them into the fold didn't have to worry about safety in the same way as regular street-walkers. They were the lucky ones – of a sort.

The Lady's place had a limited clientele, regular health checks, a strict no-drugs policy, and bouncers reputed to be as tough as the Turks themselves. Added to this, it was that rare thing among brothels in Midgar: an entirely female establishment. Lady Keshoohin, an ex-whore with a mind like a buzz-saw hiding behind a face like an elderly apple, had fought tooth and nail to create her business and make it a success. She refused to employ men; on the grounds they'd done nothing for her while she was working the streets except keep her on them. Her pimp had got all his girls hooked on drugs to make them more biddable, and she'd spent years getting herself clean before striking out on her own. The entire sex trade was set up as if designed solely to make it easy for predators, so she set out to change that. Even the muscular bouncers on the door were women. Strangely, this seemed to turn men on more than it turned them off, because there was always a waiting list to get on Lady Keshoohin's books.

At seventeen, Kuchibeni had been a new recruit to the Lady's ranks, inexperienced in everything except the lesson that life is tough. She'd believed that more than ever when she was followed and attacked by a pair of johns only a few feet from the church's door. Fully expecting to die in the gutter, it had been a complete shock when she woke up to find some kid in a dress tending her like she actually mattered.

Aerith had brought her to the safest place she knew: the church. She'd healed her wounds while she was unconscious so as not to arouse suspicion, fetched better clothes than what Kuchibeni's attackers had left her, and didn't want any kind of payment. To Aerith, helping had been as natural as breathing. To Kuchibeni, it had been a sudden shaft of light in endless shadow. She'd been a nothing then, just another nameless face on the lowest rung of the ladder. Over time she'd risen through the ranks and was now practically a madam herself, but she never forgot the kid in the dress.

The Lady worked from the shadows, manipulating the politics of Under-Plate life like a ghost. Nothing could ever be traced back to her. Kuchibeni, too, had a lot of influence after all her years of service. Aerith knew, even if her mother didn't like to acknowledge it, that she would never have been able to escape the Turks' attentions for so long without Kuchibeni's help.

"Those are women of ill-repute," her mother said when she found out what Aerith had done. "Kind as that was, sweetheart, you mustn't go near that place or those people. Guilt by association, Aerith. Life's hard enough without giving people the impression you're offering more than you actually are." She disliked harsh women like Lady Keshoohin – cruel women who had cut off their feminine instincts to survive, and then replaced them with garish reproductions. Those kinds of women would think nothing of selling you out if it meant their survival over your own.

Still, Aerith nursed the belief that Kuchibeni wasn't like that. She could be cruel, of course; you had to be, to survive when you literally had nothing. But Kuchibeni wasn't cruel in the truest sense. There was a difference between acting cruel and being it; a sense of satisfaction, Aerith supposed. Lady Keshoohin took pleasure in watching her bodyguards thrash johns who couldn't settle their tabs. Kuchibeni saw violence as necessary but not enjoyable – something you should excel at to ensure you never had to use it.

The way her face lit up whenever she saw Aerith, and the way the sapphire-hardness of her eyes briefly faded into actual warmth, had convinced Aerith right from the beginning that Kuchibeni was her ally and could be trusted. More so, at least, than Lady Keshoohin, which was why she went direct instead of through proper channels for this. Lady Keshoohin might tell the wrong people, and one thing that was constant in her world and everyone else's was that information was power.

"You want to _what_?" Kuchibeni said when she heard Aerith wanted to see her.

"I want you to teach me how to fight."

"You know what you askin', girl?"

"I know."

"Some people in this world, they ain't supposed to fight. They supposed to be all innocent an' shit." Kuchibeni canted her hips and folded her arms. "You ain't no fighter, honey. You a little mouse, runnin' around, keepin' clear of them cats. Ain't no mouse gonna try to take on a cat, 'cept crazy ones who don't live long."

"I don't want to fight the Turks."

"I say that? I don't remember sayin' that. You puttin' words in my mouth, girl." Kuchibeni arched one flawlessly plucked eyebrow. She knew Shinra was after Aerith, but had never asked why, just like she'd never asked how she could pass out hearing a john's foot crack her rib and wake up all in one piece.

Maybe she already knew. It was amazing, the things a man would tell a woman if she asked at the right moment, and there were executives who chased cheap thrills below the Plate before heading back to their wives and plush offices.

Aerith met her gaze without wavering.

"Who you gonna fight then, girl? Ain't no fool in Sector Five'd attack you. Not 'less they wanna face the consequences. You hear what I'm sayin'?"

"And I'm grateful," Aerith said calmly. "But I still want to be able to fight."

Kuchibeni examined her nails as if they were just having a casual conversation and she was name-dropping for effect – which she was, just not the one you'd assume to look at her. Six feet tall, built like an Amazon Warrior, Kuchibeni was an imposing figure who softened her appearance with feathers and ruffles. When she was working she hid a studded dog-collar under the boa, to give the impression of submissiveness even though she'd strangle a guy with a leash if he brought one. After years of perfecting her techniques, she knew all the tricks for how to manipulate men without giving up control. She'd offered to teach Aerith once, listed off a few things and then screamed with laughter at the younger girl's expression. Nobody messed with Kuchibeni, and even those who didn't know her reputation thought twice about taking her on. Gone was the skinny, lanky teen Aerith had rescued. Now she had the look of someone who could crush steel just by looking at it scathingly.

"You know," Kuchibeni drawled, "that Don Corneo's not limited to Sector Six. Keeps most of his business there, but he visitin' Lady Keshoohin's from time to time, too. An' not just to check out the competition, neither. Man like that, he got a lotta guys workin' for him. He sends 'em all over, into every sector on jobs, know what I mean?" The implication was clear. A whisper in the right ear and Kuchibeni could have any one of a number of disreputable characters eating out of her hand. "If you need protection -"

"This is different. I'm not looking for trouble, and it's not looking for me. Not any more than usual, at least. But trouble might be looking for someone I care about, and I want to be able to help if it finds him."

This time Kuchibeni's eyebrow tried to climb into her hairline. "This that SOLDIER boy of yours?

Aerith blushed.

Kuchibeni gave a hoot of laughter. Everything about her was brash, from her fashion sense, to her make-up, to her voice. When she spoke softly you knew you were in real trouble. If she wore dowdy colours and went bare-faced, you'd be hard-pressed to recognise her as the same woman.

It took a while longer, but eventually Kuchibeni agreed.

"Ai'ight, ai'ight, I'll do it. S'clear to me you gonna find a way to fight somehow, prolly with some nutball with skills like a sack of cement. Leastways if I teach you I can make sure you got enough in your head not to get killed if your SOLDIER boy brings a fight your way. But you gotta give me sumthin' in return, honey."

"I have some money -"

Kuchibeni gave her a cutting look. Aerith fell silent. "Since when it ever been about money 'tween us, sugar?" She gestured at the church, but it was clear she was referring to her room back at Lady Keshoohin's. They always talked here, where it was safer. Kuchibeni was loyal to Lady Keshoohin, but trusted her only as far as she could sneeze her out of her ear. "I'm re-outfittin' my boudoir in pink. Think you can get me some kinda pink flowers I can dry an' press for wall-decorations?"

Aerith smiled. In a city as drab and dark as Midgar, people became insensitive all too quickly. But even the harshest could be swayed by things they thought they'd never see in their lifetimes. They didn't _want_ to be made of stone, which even they didn't realise until they saw a rose for the first time. Sometimes she was shocked at how even the most unexpected people valued plants. Maybe there was hope for the world after all – something she would never have known if Zack hadn't put the idea into her head to sell them.

Zack …

"I think I can manage that."

Kuchibeni's grin was sharp as a snake-fang. "Then you got yourself a teacher, girl. We'll work here. Plenty of room to move around and it won't matter none if we break a few more boards. Wear sumthin' comfortable – none of them floaty summer dresses or any of that shit. Startin' tomorrow mornin', you gonna be learnin' how to fight, Kuchibeni-style."

* * *

><p><strong>Side-flings, Homages and Downright Rip-offs<strong>

* * *

><p><em>Lady Keshoohin's wasn't far from her church.<em>

- Keshoohin is a rough translation of 'cosmetics'.

_Kuchibeni gave a hoot of laughter._

- Kuchibeni is Japanese for 'lipstick'.


	5. Naifu: Mischief Maker

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><p><strong>5. Naifu – Mischief Maker<strong>

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><p>Naifu balanced the dagger-tip on her index finger. She wore gloves to protect her hands, so it didn't cut her. Not that she would've let it regardless. She was clumsy enough to fall over her own feet just getting up in the morning, but when it came to her blades she was nimble to the tenth power. Nobody was better than her.<p>

"I wish you wouldn't do that."

"Do what?" She didn't take her eyes off the wobbling hilt.

"That. You make me nervous."

"_I_ make _you_ nervous?" A flick of the wrist sent the dagger spinning end over end. She snatched it out of the air with ease and waggled it at Cissnei. "What about when you get out that red metal monstrosity and start playing with it?"

"Rekka is a shuriken, and I don't play with it. I clean it, I whet it, I polish it, and I check the retractable blades actually retract."

"Whateverrrr." Naifu pocketed the dagger and flopped forward. Her head banged against the tabletop. "Ow." She let it rest there and sighed. Warm air blew back up her nose. "I'm bored."

"You can't be bored. You only just finished eating."

"I _am_ bored. And that was Wutaian food. I'll be hungry again in half an hour. Until then, I'm bored."

"Why are you telling me?"

"Because you're here. And I was kind of hoping you could make me not bored."

Cissnei's feet were propped on the table, the better to balance a cardboard box of noodles in her lap. She picked out something small, white and round and ate it. Her pretty features twisted up in disgust. "Ugh. Water chestnut."

"I thought you liked chestnuts."

"Roasted over an open fire during Yule, sure, but these water chestnuts are terrible. They taste like … I don't even know what they taste like. Something bad."

"Probably all the pollution wherever they were grown making them taste like … hey, toss me one of those." Naifu held up her palm and closed it around the water chestnut Cissnei flicked at her without even trying. She popped it into her mouth and chewed thoughtfully. "Making them taste like pickled dog nuts – yuck!"

"Don't joke. I think I saw that on the menu." Cissnei poked her food with less enthusiasm than before. "We're not talking a real highbrow establishment here."

"And all those strays on the streets gotta go someplace."

Naifu looked up at the owner of the new voice. "Legend!"

The older Turk cocked a lackadaisical salute as he sauntered into the room. Turks could eat in the Mess Hall with everybody else, but typically chose not to. They liked to keep themselves to themselves. This room was basic to the point of bareness, with just a table in the middle and various plastic and easy chairs scattered around. There was a TV in the corner, but someone had busted it recently and it hadn't been replaced yet. Naifu would put money on Youhei as the culprit. That girl was _so_ bad-tempered, and had a habit of lashing out with her wicked martial-arts when she got pissed. Which … actually was most of the time. They went through a lot of TVs.

Legend pulled out a chair, twirling it backwards and straddling the seat. "Ladies. You're both lookin' pretty damn luscious today."

"Give me strength." Cissnei rolled her eyes. "Don't you ever stop?"

"Why would I stop?"

"Uh, because unlike the women in Costa del Sol, we can easily kick your ass for being such a letch?"

"I'm not a letch." His expression was hurt, but neither Naifu nor Cissnei believed it. Especially when he could hold it and his usual sly grin returned. It made the skin at the corner of his one eye crinkle, and formed slight brackets around his mouth. Nobody knew how old he was, but 'old enough to know better' was a well-worn response. "I'm a connoisseur. I know how to appreciate the finer things in life: fine food, fine drink, fine women – and only one of those three is in this room."

"I had no idea you considered cheap Wutai takeout fine food," Cissnei said without missing a beat. She offered him the box. "Want some ginger beef?"

"Yeah, like that's really beef," Legend snorted. He pointed to the logo on the side. "Kiki's Kickin' Takeaway? Kiki Kaluha wrote the book on how to make rat taste like anything 'cept rat. Literally. They keep it in back and make all new employees read it."

Cissnei looked back into the box, plonked it on the table and pushed it away with her foot. "That's it. I'm done." She rose and went to the door. "Naifu, whatever you do to make yourself not bored, try not to stab anyone, okay?"

Naifu straightened in mock-indignation. "Show some faith."

"I've been partnered with the newbies. My faith is in pretty short supply right now."

"Ouch." Legend's expression commiserated more than words. Nobody liked being partnered with wet-behind-the-ears newbies when they were used to working with experienced Turks. It was considered babysitting duty and something of a punishment even when it wasn't. He couldn't completely hide his grin as he spoke, though. "Good luck."

"That just made me put your name at the top of the list of recommendations for my replacement when I get off this detail. And Tseng owes me a favour." Cissnei gave a little finger-wave. "Toodles."

"_Never_ ruin a meal for someone just before or just after a fourteen hour shift," Naifu advised.

Legend shrugged. "So I hear you're bored?"

"Very."

His look was speculative. "Wanna hit the target range with me?"

"I can hit any target with any blade. I hate the target range."

"I wasn't recommending you use your knives."

"I hate guns even more."

"I wasn't recommending guns either."

She blinked. Legend was an explosives expert. He was also known for his unorthodox ways and his careless attitude regarding collateral damage. Possibilities opened up before her. "What _were_ you recommending?"

He grinned. "I got me a brand new concoction loaded into some cherry bombs that I'm just _itching_ to test out."

"Cherry bombs? Those little two-gil toy store things kids flush down toilets?"

"Yup. But believe me, if you flush _mine_ down any toilet, you'd get more than a piss fountain in a porcelain bowl."

Naifu stared at him. When he smiled that way, he looked kind of evil. She could understand how, during the Wutai war, he'd gotten the nickname 'God of the Death of the Battlefield'. As if insisting everyone use his first nickname 'The Legendary Turk' instead of his real name wasn't egocentric enough. Legend was arrogant, brash, a total womaniser, and proud of the whole shebang.

But he wasn't boring.

She smiled back. "Count me in."

* * *

><p><strong>Side-flings, Homages and Downright Rip-offs<strong>

* * *

><p><em>There was a TV in the corner, but someone had busted it recently and it hadn't been replaced yet. Naifu would put money on Youhei as the culprit. That girl was so bad-tempered, and had a habit of lashing out with her wicked martial-arts when she got pissed. Which … actually was most of the time. They went through a lot of TVs.<em>

- A couple more character from Before Crisis here: Youhei and Legend. Again, they can be found at finalfantasy (dot) wikia (dot) com (slash) wiki (slash) List (underscore) of (underscore) Before (underscore) Crisis (underscore) (dash)Final (underscore) Fantasy (underscore) VII(dash) (underscore) Characters. Youhei is a name that has several meanings, one of which is 'mercenary'. She is called 'Martial Arts (female)' in the game and actually got a small part in the animated OVA Last Order as the Turk who obersved and reported back to Tseng what happened in the Nibelheim reactor. Legend is from Book One of this series and is called 'Legend (male)' in the game.


	6. Cloud: Expert

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><p><strong>6. Cloud – Expert<strong>

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><p>"Yo, Cloud. Wake up."<p>

Cloud blinked, only then realising his chin had dropped onto his chest. He scrambled to his feet, snapping off an instinctive salute. "Sorry, sir!"

"Cut that out. It's just me." Zack grinned at him. "Or would you prefer me to say 'at ease'?"

Cloud tried hard not to colour up. Tried, and failed. Thankfully Zack laughing at him wasn't as bad as it had been in the beginning, when they first met, before Cloud realised that Zack laughed at everybody.

Cloud narrowed his eyes. There was an odd, knowing timbre to Zack's laugh. Was he _smirking_? Oh boy. Not good. Few people could tell the difference between Zack's smiles, but Cloud had learned to read into exact quirk of his friend's eyebrows – usually because it promised some hare-brained scheme or other that would further cement Cloud's conviction that the vital components of First Classes were strength, courage and mild insanity.

"What's so funny?"

"You."

"What?"

No doubt about it; Zack really was smirking. "Three, two, one …"

Cloud's feet nearly went out from under him. What the hell? He stumbled, realised he was standing on undulating metal, heard the thunder of tyre tread on rough ground, and remembered. Almost instantly his gorge rose. Maybe his motion sickness really was psychosomatic, but all in his head or not, it was a bitch and tasted worse. His only consolation was that General Sephiroth wasn't sharing this truck.

Zack shook his head. "Time-delayed puking. Classic. Don't ever change, Cloud. You're too damn funny as you are."

Cloud wiped at his mouth and winced as he stood. They'd been travelling for a while, so there wasn't much to come up anymore, and dry retching made his ribcage hurt. Zack, of course, looked in the peak of health, despite the fact they were in the middle of nowhere, headed into the mountains, climbing dangerous slopes in trucks probably designed by someone who'd never actually experienced a Nibelheim snowstorm. Unless they were equipped with snow-chains as tough as dragon guts, the team would be walking the last part. The valley beyond the peaks would be warmer, but you had to cross rough country first, and that was the bit that finished off the unwary.

Winter in the north wasn't like winter anywhere else. Cloud had tried to explain to the guys who'd shared his dorm during training, and been met with disbelieving looks – especially when he got to the part about using upstairs windows as both entrance and exit for several months of each year while the lower half of your house was buried in snow. A southerner like Zack had no real comprehension of how to cope in those conditions, although the mako and SOLDIER training maybe provided an edge regular southerners lacked. Southern Softies, locals called them – notwithstanding the fact 'south' was anywhere beyond the base of Mount Nibel. Cloud had grown up thinking real toughness required frostbite, and been surprised to learn all the First Class SOLDIERs were from warmer climates.

It wasn't the first time he'd been wrong about the extent of his own abilities. The rejection by the SOLDIER programme still stung. A regular grunt wasn't what he'd planned on becoming when he left Nibelheim. It was better than being tossed out of Shinra altogether, but the idea of going back to his home town in the wrong uniform made him even more nauseous than the stupid motion sickness. He'd been picked for this mission because of his knowledge of the terrain and how to survive it. It was his chance to prove his worth to the higher-ups, but given half a chance Cloud would have high-tailed it back to Midgar. Only the presence of Zack and the General made it bearable – his childhood hero and the best friend he never could have anticipated making were a salve to his wounded pride, and to the sense of failure that increased with every mile.

He hadn't even told his mother he was coming. How pathetic was that?

His thoughts were abruptly curtailed along with the truck's forward momentum. Cloud pitched forward and nearly ended up on his face. Even Zack had to brace himself.

"What the hell?"

The window-slat between them and the driver slid back. "Uh, sorry Commander. Slight, uh, roadblock."

Zack frowned, "I repeat: what the hell?"

A high-pitched screech pierced the air. It sounded like a cross between a power saw cutting through metal and a cat being stretched between two dogs. Cloud's already sore gut sank. He recognised that cry. It was etched into his childhood memories.

"Acid Dragon!" he hissed, half-to himself.

Of course, with his superior SOLDIER hearing, Zack caught the words. He stared at Cloud. "Seriously?"

"Have you ever faced one before?"

"Nope, but there's a first time for everything." Zack reached up and around to grip the Buster Sword, even as he spun around and burst out the back of the truck without waiting for it to be unlocked first. The doors slammed outwards, crashing against the sides of the truck and making the whole thing reverberate like they were in the middle of an earthquake.

Cloud scrambled to his feet and dashed after him. It was stupid, but instinctive. "Wait! You don't know how to -" His words died in his throat. He froze, staring upwards. An extremely bad word skittered across his mind like a stone skimming across a lake, but nothing made it as far as his mouth.

That was … a big one.

The entire truck would have fitted into the dragon's mouth with room to spare. Its grotesquely disproportionate head swung from side to side, and the huge neck muscles it had evolved to compensate for the weight bulged. Lidless red eyes took in the trucks, but it didn't make any move towards them. It didn't look hungry, as Cloud had feared. It didn't even look all that interested in them. Actually, the creature looked rather bored, as evidenced by the gigantic yawn and the fact it wasn't attacking already.

This was what had made that terrible noise?

No, of course not. That would be too easy.

The terrible screeching came again. The dragon lifted its head and sniffed the air. Everything and everyone seemed to hold a collective breath. When a third screech came, this time accompanied by another overlarge head pushing through the trees at the side of the road, Cloud knew they were in trouble.

"Tupping season!" he hissed, as the first dragon finally stirred itself and spat like an angry tomcat at the newcomer.

"What?"

Cloud nearly jumped out of his skin. He'd thought Zack had gone charging off elsewhere, but suddenly there he was beside him. You'd think someone carrying a sword bigger than a man would at least crunch the snow, but no.

Zack watched the two dragons with a mixture of awe and apprehension. Cloud had to admit, there were few things as impressive in nature as a bull Acid Dragon in full display. The northern lands were home to a great many rare dragon breeds, which had made it understandable that a place like Nibelheim once relied on them as a source of income and survival. Even the toughest hunting party thought twice about Acid Dragons, though.

Of all the species, Acid Dragons were probably the most bizarre. Some anthropologists had even argued they weren't true dragons at all, since they couldn't fly and had an internal biology more like salamanders. Cloud had only ever seen one before, lumbering across the landscape like the product of an experiment by a god who knew what limbs were but not necessarily how to put them together. His father had been killed while hunting an Acid Dragon cow. Though it had been a blizzard that ultimately took his life, the risk he'd run by hunting the beast was enormous. Bulls were even worse.

And this was freaking _tupping season_. Cloud had officially been away from the mountains too long if he'd forgotten that. He should have said something, he should have warned Zack or another commander of what they were risking by travelling at this time of year.

_Stupid, stupid, stupid! _

When displaying, an Acid Dragon's ugly head became almost regal as it unfurled the leathery fan around its neck and inflated the pouches of loose skin on its head. Though the rest of its scales were black as pitch, the fan was a riot of colour and shifting, eddying patterns. Thanks to some complicated internal workings, the colours actually changed and moved around; giving a good indication of how old and experienced the bull was depending on how many colours it could produce. The ridges of extending purple and blue spikes along each dragon's spine only added to the effect – at least unless, like Cloud, you knew that each spike was the size of an average man and contained venom so powerful it could dissolve a human body inside two minutes. Acid Dragons, in addition to their impressive displays, were also famous for the fact that there was no part of their bodies that wasn't poisonous.

"We need to get out of here," Cloud said breathlessly.

"Shinra's people don't just turn tail and run," retorted one of the other grunts. He'd been in a different truck, but from the disgusted look he gave Cloud, he might as well have stepped in a pile of motion-sickness vomit.

"They've already seen each other," Cloud insisted. "And we do _not _want to get between them when they start fighting."

"The General will not let any harm befall us," said one of the drivers in an accent Cloud couldn't place.

The faith was admirable. If it hadn't been here, now, like this, Cloud might have shared it. General Sephiroth epitomised everything Cloud had ever wanted to be. However, these were bull Acid Dragons, and it was tupping season. When they fought for mates and territory these creatures were damn near unstoppable.

Cloud turned an imploring gaze on Zack, who nodded. "I say we retreat. Find another way through. Our objective isn't to fight local wildlife. This is strictly recon, people. No unnecessary risks; are we clear?"

"Crystal."

Zack spun around. Cloud didn't dare. He recognised the cadence and timbre of that voice from Shinra-endorsed interviews and press releases. He clenched his fists against the injustice of finally going on a mission with his hero, but as a nonentity grunt – nothing more than a glorified packhorse sent along to lift and carry things. And now to be overheard sounding like a coward when it was just _common sense _to flee this kind of situation?

Cloud hadn't seen the General since mission-briefing, when he discovered they were all being sent to Nibelheim. Cloud and the others had already boarded their transports by the time the First Classes arrived, and Sephiroth had ridden in one while Zack took the other. Cloud had appreciated Zack being his travelling buddy, since throwing up in front of the General would have been just _too_ much, but just the knowledge of Sephiroth being so close by had been enough to make Cloud burn with shame at his own shortcomings.

_A SOLDIER reject. What a disappointment – as usual. Cloud Strife, the eternal failure._

_Shut up brain. You're __**really**__ not helping_.

General Sephiroth stepped forward to stand on Cloud's other side. "I've not come across these creatures before. You're familiar with their behaviour patterns?"

Cloud realised he was the one being asked. "Um, yes sir."

"Strife here is from this area," Zack supplied.

Sephiroth nodded. "A useful resource. What are they doing now?"

"Displaying, sir. Intimidation tactics. They each try to make the other one back down like this, and if that doesn't work, they fight." Cloud swallowed. "They can wipe out entire villages when they do that. It's always a fight to the death, and they get quite violent."

'Quite violent'? Now there was an understatement. Describing an Acid Dragon fight as 'quite violent' was like saying Shinra was a little bit powerful.

Part of Cloud couldn't understand why they were all still there. This was insane. And he was most insane of all, because he _knew_ the dangers and was still standing there like a gormless moron.

"And presumably their famous poison causes as much damage as the actual fighting, after they've injured each other and sprayed it across the landscape."

"Yes, sir." The General was just as perceptive as everyone said. Or maybe that was the hero worship at work. Either way, Cloud only stopped being impressed when one of the dragons bellowed and lowered its head like a battering ram. Panic dumped a load of adrenaline into his system. "They're about to engage, sir. We should … we should leave. I mean, it would be advisable to retreat. Now."

"I understand." Sephiroth walked forward.

"General," said Zack in a distinctly warning tone.

"Commander," Sephiroth replied evenly, as if they were just greeting each other as they passed in the corridor. Then he leaped. Didn't even take a running start; just leapt into the air, impossibly high, like it was nothing.

Afterwards, Cloud wasn't able to remember much more than a flash of metal (or was that silver hair?) and a streak of dark leather against the blue sky. Neither dragon acknowledged the puny human. Perhaps they didn't even see him. Then, abruptly, each one stopped roaring and slumped forward, shaking the ground on impact. They didn't get up again. Clouds of steam rose from the precise cuts in the tops of their heads, where General Sephiroth had skewered straight through their massive skulls, slicing through the hard bone to get at the brains beneath. The blood flow was minimal – a Very Good Thing, as Zack would say, since what little there was melted whatever it touched. The battle – no, it was an execution – was over in seconds. It probably took longer for the dragons to fall over than it took for the General to kill them.

Sephiroth appeared back in his spot at Cloud's side as silently and quickly as Zack had earlier. Had that really only been a few minutes ago? It felt like a lifetime.

Cloud stared at the two dangerous creatures, reduced to piles of semi-hazardous meat in ostensibly less time that it had taken to blink. He could barely believe it. He'd thought he knew how impressive Sephiroth could be, but it was only now that he realised the true scale of the General's skills. No wonder the war in Wutai was over. This man was more powerful than the entire opposing force put together. If he'd wanted, or if Shinra had directed it, Sephiroth could have laid waste to the entire country.

Cloud gulped. Thank Ifrit the General was on _their_ side.

Zack folded his arms. "Show-off."

Sephiroth wiped Masamune on a patch of snow, dissolving it with the residue. The metal of the blade remained undamaged. Well, of course it would. Such an extraordinary man could have nothing less than an extraordinary sword. "The way is clear now. They were far enough apart that the trucks can pass between them safely. I'll send word for someone to deal with clean-up. Creatures like this shouldn't be left to be hacked up and used for disreputable purposes. This is the shortest route to Nibelheim, is it not?" He didn't wait for an answer. "Then it's imperative we use it. Time is of the essence. Or had you forgotten our mission objective?"

The usually cheerful line of Zack's mouth hardened. Cloud wondered at that. "I haven't forgotten."

Sephiroth nodded.

Zack raised a hand and yelled, "Everybody move out. Back to the trucks before more of these big guys turn up."

Slightly puzzled by the exchange, but wanting to get out of there in case more _did_ follow the tupping calls, Cloud scrambled for the truck along with the rest.


	7. Youhei: Observer

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><p><strong>7. Youhei – Observer<strong>

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><p>Youhei was good at her job, whatever it happened to be. As a mercenary she'd taken her share of raw deals, experienced enough betrayals to watch for the tell-tale signs in her comrades, and learned when to bail and when to stick with a job. She wasn't loyal to anyone except herself.<p>

She wasn't sure what had changed. Maybe she'd just grown tired of the constant chopping and changing, always having to watch her back and never able to relax for fear of someone betraying her for their own highest bidder. Maybe she was just getting careless in her old age, letting herself believe stuff that only kids really believed in.

Or maybe working with Veld and his Turks, and having someone finally show faith that was more than just part of a contract she'd signed, had made its own changes to Youhei's character. Whatever the reason, her interpretation of loyalty had been altering for a while now; her interpretation of betrayal as well. When she and a bunch of other Turks kidnapped President Shinra's son and held him to ransom so they could aid Veld, even though he'd deserted, that was the very definition of betrayal. They'd _all_ broken their contracts and turned on their employer. No mercenary worth their salt would see it as any less than outright betrayal. Yet it had also been the very definition of loyalty, too. Likewise when Tseng got Shinra to leave them all alive, but sold out Veld and his daughter, the AVALANCHE leader Elfé, to buy his Turks their lives and their freedom. Youhei had been forced to rewrite her entire definition of loyalty and still wasn't sure what it was anymore.

But this type of high-level betrayal? She hadn't seen this coming. Not after Genesis Rhapsodos. Not after Angeal Hewley. Not _at all_.

She pressed her phone to her ear and hoped the signal was strong enough to get through all this metal. It was, and picked up after just one ring.

"Tseng."

"Boss-man," Youhei said in what was, for her, a soft whisper, but which echoed in the open space of the chamber like a foghorn.

Kind of like the heavy breathing of that SOLDIER, and the infantryman who'd just fallen down the stairs headfirst. The SOLDIER had reached for him right before passing out, creating a bizarre tableau that struck an unidentifiable chord in Youhei. Comrades to the end. Brothers in arms. Stuff she'd never believed in until relatively recently, when she almost jacked in her contract with Shinra to go after Veld and help him save his daughter. She'd never reneged on a contract before. She'd never felt strongly enough about anything or anyone to sever a deal before she got paid. This Turk gig had been a regular income after years of hand-to-mouth living, which had appealed to her, but it had brought so much more than a bank account with actual Gil in it.

Now she was once again being confronted by the kind of loyalty she'd thought only existed in stories, and what was she doing? Calling Tseng to tell him about it. Her own kind of loyalty, and it didn't mesh well with the scene before her, since her report would bring Shinra out here, and Shinra would not be happy.

It sort of made a mockery of her spending her Phoenix Down on the kid with the giant stab wound in his gut. Save him, and then turn him in. Yeah, Youhei, great plan.

She stared at the kid's face as she talked. And he really was just a kid. She bet he'd never even imagined half the stuff she'd seen and done – or what his SOLDIER buddy had seen and done, come to that. She recognised Zack Fair. Cissnei was sweet on him, or something. Hard to tell with that girl, but there was definitely more on Cissnei's side than she was letting on. Fair had been in Wutai during the war. That was enough on its own, but he'd also faced off against Rhapsodos during the Mass SOLDIER Desertion Incident, and killed his own mentor when Hewley went spiralling into his own bit of craziness. No, no way this blond kid, with his unscarred cheeks and hint of puppy fat, had known true betrayal and hardship.

Not before today, anyway.

"Youhei here."

Her voice tore up the air like a cheese grater. It could never be described as melodious. Her mother used to say it was like she'd been gargling battery acid. Big words from a woman whose sixty-a-day habit and nightly drinking had not only put her into an early grave, but also lowered her voice so many octaves she was a tenor by her death at age thirty-five. Not that her daughter had mourned her. Youhei was just glad she could finally quit telling people she'd walked into doors and fallen down stairs when she was really as agile as a squirrel.

Youhei's accent was as hard on the ears as one of her punches, her nasally twang was as abrasive as her manner, but not right now. Right now she was shocked under her business-like tone.

Case in point: "What is it?" Tseng shouldn't have had to ask. If she was calling, something was up. He'd sent her out to Nibelheim on pure recon, which should've meant coming home and filing a report like usual. A phone call meant only Bad Things.

And how.

"It's Sephiroth," Youhei said. "Something happened. He went off the deep end."

"What?"

"He's dead, sir."


	8. Naifu: Pickpocket

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><p><strong>8. Naifu – Pickpocket<strong>

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><p>"S'all your fault."<p>

"My fault?"

"Yeah. If you hadn't invented the stupid things in the first place –"

"Hey, kid, I didn't ask you steal one. I especially didn't ask you to fall on your ass, let it roll outta your pocket, and watch it light itself on a discarded cigarette."

"Do you know how much paperwork I have to fill in now? I hate paperwork!"

"You hate everything."

"Do not! Just paperwork. And your stupid cherry bombs." Naifu folded her arms. "And being left in Tseng's office like some naughty little kid sent to see the principal."

Legend snorted. "This is damn humiliating. I can't believe a pipsqueak like you lifted one of my bombs without me noticing. You couldn't be more careful where you drop stuff? You damn near killed your partner and half a block of slums. That should've got way more than the 'whoops' you said at the scene."

"How do you know about that?" She eyes him warily. "You weren't there. Were you?"

"News travels fast. Bad news especially, but bizarre bad news is light-speed." Legend still hadn't stopped scowling. His arms had to be cramping, being folded so tight like that. "_Damn_ humiliating," he reiterated.

Naifu waited for a few moments before saying, "Impressive though, right?"

Legend didn't reply.

"Aw, c'mon. You have to admit, it was pretty good how I got it away from you without you noticing."

"What were you planning to do with it afterwards?"

"Um …" Actually, the challenge had been the theft itself, she'd forgotten she had it in her top pocket, which was how she'd gotten into this mess after tripping over while on patrol with Rod.

Rod, who had come away from the scene with three broken ribs, a fractured wrist, several gashes and a very strange expression on his face. Since Naifu had been knocked unconscious she wasn't sure what had happened to make him look that way. Something told her it hadn't just been the fireworks, but whatever it was, Rod wasn't telling. Instead he'd withdrawn into himself, leaving her to take the flack without his support. Legend had been dragged in when it emerged where the tiny explosive with the big boom had come from.

He stared at her now, his one good eye boring into her with the force of a pneumatic drill. "You're a little punk, you know that?" He sighed and shook his head, as if being that mad drained him of all energy. "An impressive punk, but still a punk, and a pain in my ass."

Naifu smiled as the tension finally broke. Then her expression switched to alarm as Tseng came in and the entire situation was put on hold at the reason for his lateness. Suddenly a lot of thing became less important, as Youhei, whom he'd sent as reconnaissance for the Nibelheim mission, sent back word that things had suddenly gone to hell in a big way.

"Sephiroth's dead?" Naifu echoed in disbelief.

Legend whistled, but his face had paled. He'd served with Sephiroth during the Wutai war. He knew exactly how tough the guy was. Anything that could take out the Silver General was even tougher than that, which was a scary thought on so many different levels. "Well … fuck."

Since Tseng would never say it, Naifu did. "You said it, buster."


	9. Aerith: Sceptic

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><p><strong>9. Aerith - Sceptic<strong>

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><p>Aerith knew she was being watched. It seemed prudent not to react, since for once the Turks kept their distance and didn't seem concerned with bringing her in. She didn't want to change their minds about that. Shinra's goons coming below-Plate was never good news.<p>

The bizarre thing was, they didn't go away either. Practically from the day Zack left, she sensed them, watching but never actually approaching her. They were always there, a lumpish suspicion on the fringes of her mind – the kind of feeling you get when you're convinced you've left the front door unlocked or the oven on. It was unnerving, like trying to shower in a room of one-way mirrors with people on the other side.

What could they want?

As the days passed, her suspicions blossomed. Something was up. She could feel it crawling along her skin like maggots.

Tseng came by. That was a rarity in itself. The Head of the Turks delegated tasks to underlings, so if he was here personally...

Her suspicions tightened into a knot of dread.

In a way, Aerith felt sorry for Tseng. In the beginning, he'd been the one who always tried to convince her to return to Shinra willingly. He'd been logical, almost kind, but nowadays that initial kindness had eroded into clinical detachment, apparently in direct proportion with the amount of power he wielded. She wondered about the things he'd seen, done, and ordered, for such changes to occur, and the handful of times she'd seen him since he took over leadership of the Turks, she'd tried hard to spot shreds of the man she'd known in his face.

His eyes were empty as he stood on her doorstep, not trying to come inside or inviting her out. Yet Aerith got the sense that this wasn't because he didn't feel anything, than because at the moment he had nothing to fill his expression _with_. Tseng was an empty glass, shiny and polished, but still capable of holding emotions if he was so inclined. He just wasn't so inclined very often.

When he didn't volunteer a reason for knocking on her door, she asked bluntly what was going on. He looked at her in that way he sometimes did – blank with just a hint of something more underneath.

Bizarrely, even though he was a Turk, she didn't feel like she was in danger around Tseng, but she didn't exactly feel safe either. He allowed her to push him more than other Turks perhaps would, but she was acutely aware of his role in her world. The fastidiously spotless suit wouldn't let her forget. She knew he was the one Shinra would tell if and when they finally grew tired of playing games, and she wasn't sure what he'd do when that happened.

"Why now? Why, after all this time, have you suddenly upped surveillance of me?" She suspected it was timed to correspond with Zack's absence, but she couldn't read anything from Tseng's face.

Despite Zack's claims he was due for a mission away from Midgar, it had been weeks since she started having the dreams, and Zack had remained here until recently. She'd been relieved with each day he remained at her side. Now he'd been shipped out and she was being spied on. That couldn't be a coincidence.

Did Shinra think he'd been selling secrets to her or something? Or had Shinra been waiting for him to leave her unprotected? Had she got it wrong when she interpreted the dreams – which still came every night, and still disturbed her enough to throw up at least once a week – and it had been she, not Zack, who was the target of the formless evil? Suddenly her covert lessons with Kuchibeni seemed hopelessly inadequate. The Turks were the bogeymen of her childhood.

That was when Tseng told her Zack was missing.

She tried not to let anything show in her face, the way Tseng did. She tried to let his words slide off her like water. Tseng couldn't give her details, of course, but he told her enough to make her heart plummet. There had been an incident. Everybody on the mission had been declared MIA pending further investigation. Even that much information was top security.

"Why tell _me_, then?"

"Because I thought you'd already know the truth."

"I …" She stopped. Blinked. Realised what he meant.

Aside from Professor Hojo, the man who once oversaw the Cetra Project, Tseng probably knew more about her and her abilities than anyone else in the world. He knew about her connection to the Planet. He knew about the Lifestream, however much he actually believed in it. He knew about the nature of mako, and the hypotheses that it linked those touched by it, like SOLDIERS, to beings like Cetra.

If Zack had died, Aerith would know. She would have felt it. The more she thought this, the more convinced she became that this was the conclusion Tseng had also drawn. Turks were information-gatherers, among other things. He was asking her, without actually asking, whether those on Zack's mission were dead – which also implied he didn't _know_ what had happened to them, or at least where they were right now.

If even the head of the Turks didn't know, then there was still hope he was okay as well as alive, just in a place Shinra couldn't reach. Aerith clung to this, even as her dream nudged her mind.

"I didn't know," she whispered.

Tseng didn't nod, but he did leave. The Turks kept watching her. They were waiting for something. Aerith took that as a good sign.


	10. Rod: Quitter

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><p><strong>10. Rod – Quitter <strong>

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><p>Rod was mad. Mad as hell. Mad as a hornet. Mad as lightning cutting through the sky in a thunder storm. Not about Sephiroth, although that was shocking enough. The hum of traffic from the street beyond the alley undercut his words. He had been ready to shoot the 'mugger' stupid enough to grab him, a suited Turk, and drag him down here, until he realised who it really was. Alejandro, his one-time second in command and best friend, looked back at him with arms folded and an indecipherable expression.<p>

Rod knew that the Rage Riders had given themselves up to the feuds. What was more, he knew they blamed him for the ill effects they had suffered because of it. According to their skewed understanding of how things worked on the streets, _he_ had driven them to give up their name and independence to ally themselves with a bigger, stronger gang. That was what the kid he'd pinned down had said, right before Naifu fell on her ass and her stupid cherry bomb flung them both into a building. The chaos that followed had allowed the kid to get away, but Rod had known someone would be back. That it was Alejandro just made this easier. He wouldn't have to interpret hearsay; he could get answers straight from the source: the guy who had broken his trust and sold them out.

"What the _fuck_ were you thinking?" he demanded.

"Nice to see you too, bro," Alejandro said easily. The livid red of his tatts made him look like he had been slashed across the tops of his cheekbones. They drew attention to his eyes, which were anything but relaxed. Rod fell instinctively into a defensive stance at the fury burning in them.

"You joined one of the big gangs?" Rod demanded.

Alejandro shrugged. "Not like you left us much choice."

"Fuck that for an explanation!"

"See, since you made me leader, bro, I don't gotta explain myself to you no more. You left. You ab-di-ca-ted." He enunciated the word, punctuating each syllable with a flick of his index finger. "I don't owe you no explanation. Only reason I'm giving you anything is 'cause I want you to know what you did to your bros when you left to take care of just yourself."

"I left you in charge –"

"That's right; you did. And I made a decision about the situation you left us in."

"You mean you betrayed the Rage Riders."

Alejandro's expression became murderous. If Rod had been a more timid guy, he might have taken a step back at the shot of pure venom. "You wanna talk to me about betrayal? Do you really wanna go there? _Really_?"

"I never betrayed you –"

"The hell you didn't! You abandoned the gang. You walked out on us because we weren't enough for you anymore. You promised to protect the boys and then you just left to suit yourself. Call me crazy, but that sounds like betrayal to me."

"I left you in charge," Rod insisted. "You were there from the beginning. You knew as much as I ever did about running things."

"But nobody else believed in me."

"The boys –"

"That's not who I meant. We both know my rep wasn't worth shit compared to yours. It wasn't just knowing how to swing a bike chain or fire a gun that kept us safe from outsiders; it was the name that went with it. _Your_ name, Rodriguez. Everyone knew not to mess with you. The big gangs, they're feuding all the time. We both know that. We grew up seeing it, didn't we? You remember growing up with me, _bro_? You remember all the times we shared as kids? You remember the cycle of all gangs – the Bloodbaths, the Acid Tongues, the Keepers? No matter the name, they all ended up doing the same thing in the end. They always tried to recruit smaller outfits like us to pad out their numbers when they lost too many of their own in fights. Remember?"

"I remember," Rod said flatly.

"Your rep kept them away from us. As long as they knew you'd bust the heads of anyone who tried to absorb the Rage Riders, nobody tried. And then suddenly, poof, you weren't there anymore. Did you think they wouldn't find out? After you left to join Shinra, guess who came calling? And they weren't taking no for an answer no more."

"They would've if you'd said it hard enough. I wasn't special. You could've done the same as I did and _shown_ them the Rage Riders weren't for sale."

Alejandro laughed and shook his head. "Never thought I'd hear you sound so naïve. What do you care, anyhow? You left. How've you been finding life as a Shinra lapdog? Or should I say," he curled his mouth around the word like he was being asked to taste turpentine, "_Shinra's bitch_?" He tossed his head. For a street-rat, Alejandro had pretty good hair. Soft brown and wavy, it moved like something out of a shampoo commercial. He was always tossing it about when making a point. When did that start? Rod had memories of them shaving each other's heads when they got lice as kids, and laughing at how ridiculous they looked. Other than that and staying free of gang-tatts, appearances hadn't been much of an issue for Rod. He never got into that 'gotta be buff to get girls' mind-set. Maybe that was because just staying alive turned his muscles solid and his long body trimmer than gym bunnies from above the Plate.

Alejandro, on the other hand, always seemed aware of every inch of himself as he moved. He had nursed a suspicion of being seen as weak and done his damndest to appear tough while they were teenagers. He had dressed to impress and played the part of the young gangbanger to the hilt. Even now he was dressed in leather, spiked wristbands and thick steel-toed biker boots. A bright red bandana sat loosely around his neck and a single stud glittered in one ear. It wasn't a diamond, but glass often sparkled more because it had more to prove.

His tone was calculatingly spiteful. "Did you know that your Turk friends iced one of your old bros just last week?"

"What?"

"But then why would you care, right?" Alejandro shrugged. "We ain't your bros no more. Your boys ain't your boys."

Rod's mind bubbled with lava-hot anger. "You can't pin that on me. I left you in charge. What I did wasn't anything special. The bigger gangs listened to me because I didn't give no ground and always did what had to be done to _make_ 'em respect me. Like you said, we were kids together. You know I didn't have no superpowers or special connections; I just sent the right message to the right people and let the rest take care of itself. You remember the recruiter I sent back to the Bloodbaths when the Rage Riders first started?"

"I remember," Alejandro said softly. His eyes shone with memories, and perhaps something more. "You sent him back in pieces. On film."

Rod had committed a single act of conscious, outsized cruelty and violence to seal his rep. It had been distasteful and made even his stomach lurch to remember, but there had been a need in order to stop further bloodshed – his boys' blood in particular. The Bloodbaths were a gang with a name that was more of a description. There was no way Rod was going to let the Rage Riders become a part of them, but the recruiter had refused to take no for an answer. Rod had thrown him out of the building they made their home at the time, only to find the guy in the alley outside leaving a message in the shape of Alejandro's dead body. Alejandro still had the scar on his stomach where the recruiter had slashed him. Rod had heard the scuffle, stepped in and seen with a predator's simplicity that he needed to send a message of his own.

He had documented it. Alejandro had helped him get the unconscious man inside and down to the basement. Then Rod had locked himself in alone with the guy and, using a stolen phone, taken photos and videoed what came next. It had been disgusting, but Rod had used the footage and the message it gave to fortify the Rage Riders' against anyone looking to intimidate them: _The is what happens if you try to recruit us_. He distributed them to the underground network and waited for the message to spread. Such a small gang wasn't worth the amount of aggro it would take to get them. As long as they didn't step on anyone else's toes or make any enemies, the bigger gangs were content to leave them alone. Rod wasn't proud of what he had done. He had never told anyone about the nightmares that followed, or the unclean feeling he got when handling blades of any sort. It was one of the reasons he now preferred blunt weapons or hand-to-hand. He had done it because it was necessary.

Growing up homeless on the streets of Midgar was tough. You grew up fast or you didn't grow up at all. That was what Rod had always believed. It was what had made Veld look twice at the punk who tried to lift a prototype model motorcycle from Shinra's workshop so he could copy its design and trick out bikes for those who brought them to him for repairs. Rod did what was necessary to get the job done, even if it was unpleasant. He was perfect Turk material.

The Bloodbaths were eventually absorbed into the Red Fangs. The few surviving members had spread word of the little biker gang and their ruthless leader. Rumour always elaborated the truth, so Rod had never had to be quite so vicious again, or so public. One death wasn't out of the ordinary in the part of Sector Six where they lived, but Rod had made himself out to be the best and used that as a yardstick until he really was. He had thought Alejandro was smart enough to do the same.

Apparently not. Apparently Alejandro had taken the easier path and ended up as cannon fodder for someone else's gang. Now things had gone wrong, he had shifted responsibility onto the absent Rod and convinced the other Rage Riders it was Rod's fault they'd lost their identity, their home, and probably their hope of hitting thirty.

Rod's hand clenched around his gun. He hadn't put it away and had no intention of doing so. This wasn't the Alejandro he had known. This wasn't the guy with whom he had shared food when one of them had picked enough pockets to eat and the other hadn't. This wasn't the guy who had saved enough to take him to the Honeybee on his sixteenth birthday. Alejandro had changed. So had Rod.

"If you'd just held your ground, they'd have respected you and left you alone," Rod said.

Alejandro snorted. "You really believe that?"

Rod wasn't sure, but he had to convince himself, and if he couldn't, he had to fake it. He straightened his spine, even though he was still feeling the effects of the medical treatment after the cherry bomb incident. "Whatever happened, it's on your head, Alejandro, not mine."

"No way, dude." Alejandro shook his head. "It's on _yours_. And the boys? They want to pay you back for it, Turk or no Turk."

"And you don't?"

He shrugged.

Rod scowled. "Whatever happened after I left, it wasn't my responsibility."

"You built the Rage Riders. _Everything _that happens to them is your responsibility."

"And none of it's yours?"

"I'm already taking my lumps," Alejandro said bitterly.

"Rod? Where'd you go?" called a voice from the street: Sandan, his partner while Naifu was being reprimanded. "Rodriguez?"

Rod didn't take his eyes off Alejandro.

"Watch your back, _bro_," his old friend said as he faded into the shadows. "You can be sure we will."

Rod stayed on his guard every step out of that alley.

"There you are!" Sandan cried. She bobbed up to him, sweeping bits of her long brown ponytail from her mouth. What was it with Turks and unsuitable hairstyles? And inappropriate nicknames, too. "Darling, if you needed to step out for a moment, there are perfectly usable facilities in the restaurants two streets over. You didn't need to use a," she wrinkled her nose, "brick wall. Phew, it smells like every dog in the neighbourhood uses this one."

"Whatever." Rod pushed past her, head too full and chest heavier than it had ever been.

He remembered the time he'd had pneumonia and the Rage Riders had been forced to cope without him while he recovered. They had pulled their jobs, stealing bikes and scavenging parts to rebuild and revamp whatever customers' brought them. Alejandro had been smoking hot back then, bringing in more than anyone else and cutting deals for classic motorcycles beyond anything anyone else could do. Rod had been insane with jealousy. That competence and talent had convinced him that Alejandro was a good choice to replace him as leader when he joined the Turks.

Something prickled at the base of his brain. Anger? Disappointment? Betrayal? He had never felt guilty before. He couldn't recognise it.

"Darling?" Sandan caught up to him. "Did something happen that I should know about? We have to be alert, now more than ever."

She was talking about the mess left by Sephiroth's passing, and the fact the general public weren't being given the whole story, but Rod interpreted her words differently.

"Fuck off, will you? Let's just get this fucking patrol over with and get the fuck back above the Plate."

"Well." Sandan folded her arms primly. "_Someone_ rolled out of the wrong side of bed this morning."

* * *

><p><strong>Side-flings, Homages and Downright Rip-offs<strong>

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><p>Sandan is Japanese for 'gunshot' (roughly translated) and is Shotgun (Female) from <em>Before Crisis<em>.See her picture at finalfantasy (dot) wikia (dot) com (slash) wiki (slash) Shotgun (underscore slash) (Female)


	11. Cissnei:  Tutor

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><p><strong>11. Cissnei – Tutor <strong>

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><p>Cissnei didn't request guard-duty over Zack's girlfriend. Given the choice, she probably wouldn't have chosen to do it. She'd done surveillance of the Cetra girl before, but that was a long time ago, before Zack even made the SOLDIER programme. Back then Aerith Gainsborough had been just another of Shinra's background research projects, albeit one with more baggage and a different setting than the usual laboratory. Cissnei remembered Aerith as a gangly pre-teen, all knees and elbows, who shook her head when Tseng asked her to give herself up willingly, and then took shelter in a dilapidated church like it could protect her.<p>

When Cissnei saw her next, however, Aerith was quite different. She'd grown up, and Zack had been there in the church with her. Technically, as Shinra employees, neither he nor Cissnei were supposed to be there. Zack, at least, could claim ignorance about Aerith's Cetra heritage. Cissnei, on the other hand, had no such excuse.

It was frowned upon to track Shinra's own unless you'd been ordered to. She could give no good reason for trailing Zack below the Plate, except ...

Except nothing. Zack was a case worth keeping an eye on after the business with Project G. At the time Cissnei had refused to acknowledge the why of her own behaviour, especially when she observed the pair going into Sector Five to _sell flowers_, of all things.

A SOLDIER First Class selling flowers in the bowels of Midgar? The idea was so surreal it went beyond laughable. Could Cetra manipulate minds or something? Cissnei knew only what she'd been told about that project, and she'd never wanted to know more. Wanting to know more than you were supposed to was deadly in Shinra.

Sometimes she thought the same could be said of being too human in the Turks.

She'd actually been wistful as she watched Aerith and Zack hug, talk, and do the kinds of things normal couples did, despite being anything but normal. Then she'd caught herself and stowed the wistfulness where it couldn't impede her judgement. A Turk had no business being wistful about anything, especially not relationships that weren't purely functional or too strained to ever work.

The life of a Turk was defined by its approach to hope. Turks were the product of Midgar as much as the sludge on the streets and the smoke that belched from Shinra's stacks. To Midgar and to a Turk, false hope was worse than no hope at all, and the kind of life bred here offered only the falsest. Once you accepted hope was an elaborate hoax, and that life really wasn't much more than this, you were a Midgarder. Once you crystallised your mind enough to see the bigger picture beyond mere hope, you were on your way to being a Turk. Once you were able to _use _false hopes as just another means of getting the job done, that was when you were a _true_ Turk, not just a schmuck in a suit.

Cissnei had been a Turk almost as long as she could remember. She not only had no business being wistful, she had no right.

And yet …

Zack Fair. SOLDIER First Class. Formerly of Gongaga. Mentee of Angeal Hewley. Terminated the fugitive Hewley and now carried his sword. Second in Command to General Sephiroth. Cissnei's brain ticked over with his vital stats and pertinent bits of information. The problem was, these didn't make up the whole. The Zack Fair on paper was not the Zack Fair of real life.

Actually, the _real_ problem was that she'd begun to see a difference between the two, and that was dangerous.

They both worked for Shinra. They'd both killed people in its name. Zack, however, still managed to retain that strange sense of honour that meant the blood on his hands wasn't as visible as the stains on her own.

Maybe it was his commitment to this honour. Maybe it was the fact he refused to become just a killing machine. Maybe it was that damnable way he had of making you forget he'd been trained to slice people up with that sword – _including his own mentor_. It happened in different settings – him in war-torn Wutai, her in Midgar back alleys – but Zack Fair was as much a murderer as Cissnei, yet he wore it so you'd never know. Cissnei could put on a fancy dress to go incognito at a formal Shinra event, and still feel blood caked under her nails and drying in her hair from arterial spray she'd washed off weeks, months, even years ago. Zack Fair could walk through Sector Five in a SOLDIER uniform, fully armed, and look innocent as a newborn baby. He still trusted. He'd been betrayed multiple times, seen and done terrible things, and yet he still _trusted_. He still believed in people's basic goodness; that someone could be redeemed long past the point Cissnei would have buried Rekka in their heart.

She'd wanted that. Not the foolish trust – that was just an easy way of getting yourself killed – but the underlying part. She'd refused to acknowledge it, even as she lurked in the shadows like a freaking _stalker_, but she'd wanted that ability of his: to fit in without giving up who he really was.

She still wanted it years later, after he vanished and the void where he used to be gave rise to unwelcome thoughts about why she missed him when they'd hardly been close friends. A Turk didn't have friends who weren't Turks, because only another Turk could understand what the job asked of you. What it demanded you become.

Zack was a SOLDIER, but that wasn't all of him. Somehow, despite everything, he'd managed to remain an optimist. He hadn't allowed the job to eat him alive, the way you had to let it take over when you were a Turk – at least if you wanted to survive.

As the years passed, she started to wonder where Cissnei the Turk ended and her true self began. Compartmentalising only worked when you didn't allow the segments of your life to spill over into each other. She used to be able to take off Cissnei when she took off the suit and thought of herself by her real name, but it was getting harder and harder.

Tseng looked like he'd been born in a suit. His hair got longer and he stopped tying it into an efficient little ponytail, but you still couldn't mistake him for anything but a Turk. Was she getting that way too? On the Costa del Sol she'd worn a bikini, but still answered to Cissnei. Had it already been too late back then, when Zack was still around?

Now Zack was MIA and Cissnei wasn't sure what to think anymore. Figuring it out was made all the more difficult when Tseng gave her this detail and refused to listen when she protested. She was to watch the Cetra girl. Moreover she was to _watch out_ for her. End of story.

Maybe it was the promise Tseng had given to Zack, to watch over Aerith for him. Or maybe Tseng's own feelings for Aerith were what had motivated the order. He had to know about Cissnei's attachment to Zack, and he certainly knew about Zack's relationship with Aerith. Tseng was a canny bastard and ruthless about how he used that – something he fully acknowledged. There was very little he didn't know, and even less he said about it. If he'd set Cissnei to watch Aerith, he probably knew it would eventually become watching over something precious of Zack's, and that getting close to Aerith was like getting close to someone who'd left an imprint on your psyche like a handprint in dough. The Zack Fair on paper wasn't the Zack Fair of real life, and the Zack Fair of Cissnei's memories wasn't the same one Aerith had known. What better way to ensure the girl was protected as well as watched, than to tail her with someone who had a personal stake in her wellbeing? Albeit an extremely screwed-up one.

Cissnei had a vested interest in keeping Aerith alive. Wherever Zack was, he would come back to this girl. Cissnei didn't fool herself that _she_ meant more to Zack than any of his other friends, but her profiler training told her he'd move mountains to return to Aerith if he was still alive.

Likewise, Cissnei knew Aerith's intuition was more accurate than any of the drivel reports Shinra passed down about not knowing where those of the Nibelheim mission had gone. Those reports were falser than a trophy wife's breasts. A clandestine Turk report, unbeknownst to the higher-ups, said Sephiroth had gone crazy, attacked his own people, and been taken out by a lowly infantryman with a lot of guts and even more luck. At the General's time of death, Zack had been alive, but afterwards been transported to parts unknown, and even the Turk information network had failed to locate him since then. In the absence of any concrete evidence to the contrary, Aerith believed Zack was still alive, so Cissnei believed it too.

She watched Aerith from wherever the shadows were deepest – the cage-like lattice roof beams, the top of a nearby building, somewhere people couldn't see and so wouldn't recognise the suit. It was difficult, so she tried watching her in civvies, which gave her more freedom to hide in crowds, but left a nasty taste in her mouth and eroded the boundaries of those internal compartments a little more. She went back to the suit the very next shift, and kept wearing it for each after that.

And then, just over a month after Zack was officially listed as missing, Aerith vanished as well.

Cissnei was angry enough to spit acid. It had happened while she wasn't on duty – the surveillance was shared between three of them – but for some reason she still felt responsible, as if she was the one who'd screwed up.

"There's no way she could just disappear." She was firm. "We find her. Immediately."

"She could've left the city," said Juu.

"Without us noticing?" demanded Tama.

Juu turned her calm grey eyes on him. "Without _you_ noticing."

Tama's jaw tightened. He'd been on duty when it happened. If anything really had happened to Aerith, his head was the one that would roll. Or so he thought in his little greenhorn mind.

Actually, Cissnei knew it was all their heads on the chopping block. Both Tseng and the Shinra higher-ups wanted to keep hold of Aerith – or keep Aerith on hold until she was profitable enough to be interesting again.

"We find her," she said again. "We canvass the area. We don't stop until we know her current location."

"Possibly in some alley with a knife between her ribs," Juu said under her breath.

Cissnei put no inflection in her voice. "For all our sakes, you'd better hope not."

"Her mother's still in Midgar," Tama said hopefully. He was a new recruit – they both were. He and Juu made Cissnei feel old when the smooth skin in the mirror told her otherwise.

"Would she leave her mother behind if she left the city?" Juu mused.

"Depends," said Cissnei. "If she thought taking her along would endanger her, then maybe. Or maybe she didn't get a choice in the matter. Start with the mother, Juu. Stake out the house and report anything significant or suspicious. It's possible we're talking kidnap, not voluntary departure. Tama, check security footage of the city boundaries."

"What, all of it?"

Cissnei didn't bother to reply, just levelled a look at him that Reno once called Mother Hen Gone Bad.

Tama backed off. "Yes, Cissnei."

Cissnei.

Cissnei, Cissnei, Cissnei …

Was there anyone alive except herself and Tseng who knew her real name anymore?

_I want him to know_. The thought arrived in her mind without warning and fully formed, as if someone else had placed it there. She was shocked – and again when she realised it wasn't a lie. Of all the people in the world, she wanted Zack Fair to know the truth of the woman behind the Turk. She wanted to hear him call her by her real name. She wanted someone like him, someone genuinely _good_, to understand her.

Or maybe not. Maybe what she actually wanted was redemption, and there were few enough people in Midgar capable of giving it as it was, now Zack was gone. Aerith was a good person, too.

She realised Juu and Tama were still watching and mentally shook herself. Sentimental twaddle. Aerith was part of the job, nothing more, and Cissnei was nothing if not good at her job. "Fine. Move out."


	12. Reno: Spectator

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><p><strong>12. Reno – Spectator<strong>

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><p>"You're sure?" Tseng's voice didn't change. Anyone else might have climbed an octave, or at least injected a little surprise. Not Tsengy-boy. His po-face didn't slip a notch.<p>

Cissnei nodded. "Absolutely."

Reno tilted his head at her. He'd always sort of fancied her, but Cissnei was one of those look-but-don't-touch women. It wasn't anything she did, since she wasn't a badass in the traditional sense. She was dangerous – hell yeah – but she coupled that with a weird mildness totally at odds with her ability to throw a shuriken the size of Don Corneo's ego. It was just a vibe she gave off; even when she smiled, or brushed aside her hair, or you heard her talk and realised being a Turk hadn't roughened her voice. Cissnei was a badass, but a sexy badass. Nobody got away with anything around her unless they wanted broken fingers – something he knew after a badly-timed grope when she was young and he was younger. Veld had refused him a Cure Spell for an entire duty shift, during which he had been in three fights and had his ass kicked in all three. The humiliation was devastating. He had never tried to touch her fun-bags again.

Tseng stared at the report on his desk. Reno didn't bother to hide his sigh. Nobody expected him to. They didn't even acknowledge his theatrics, which was galling. What did a guy have to do to get a little attention around here?

Die, apparently. Or go crazy. Or both. But that was another story.

"Do Juu and Tama know?" Tseng asked.

"I did their observations myself," Cissnei replied.

"Do they know?"

"No."

"Good."

She stared at him. Reno raised an eyebrow. Rude, as ever, was unreadable.

"What next?" Cissnei said at last. Her eyes flickered to Reno and Rude, as if wary about them listening when this mission wasn't even their brief.

Reno was also surprised to be called in. True, the two butterballs Cissnei had been partnered with were lacking experience, but it wasn't Tseng's style to interfere with the line-up once he had chosen it. Reno and Rude weren't exactly at a loose end, either. After the desertions by First Class Rhapsodos and First Class Hewley, plus this whole Nibelheim fiasco, there were officially _no_ First Class SOLDIERs left. Tseng had briefed them to dispel the growing panic in Midgar before it exploded and made the higher-ups do something stupid. Preventative medicine was sometimes better than curative, even if looking for potential amongst the trainees who could be fast-tracked to assuage the tension was tedious in the extreme. Those kids were so _intense_. Reno felt like telling them they'd be selected for SOLDIER if they passed one final test, then taking them below-Plate, to the Honeybee or someplace, just to see their faces and laugh.

Then Tseng told them what he wanted them to do, and it struck Reno that sometimes reality echoed fantasy in weird ways.

"Been a while since we worked together, huh, sugar-lips?"

She rolled her eyes. "Your patter hasn't improved."

"Aw, don't be that way, Ciss. At least you're on point."

"I'm jumping up and down inside. Really. Head of a team with a slacker and a slab of granite in sunglasses."

"You gonna take that from her, Rude?"

"She's in charge," Rude deadpanned. "And you are a slacker."

Cissnei smothered a snigger. She did it delicately, but it was still there. Reno wondered how much she'd laughed with her previous partners. He was so used to being one of a pair with Rude, it felt odd deferring to a third person. Cissnei, on the other hand, seemed grateful to be away from the newbies; which was odd, given she was the one who usually showed most concern over fresh meat not becoming _dead_ meat. Either Juu and Tama were irritating as hell (a distinct possibility, since they'd managed to lose their target so easily and let it _stay_ lost this long), or Cissnei had stuff on her mind.

Ah, well, at least they'd located the missing girl. And to tell the truth, their destination now was _so_ much more preferable to another jaunt amongst the SOLDIER wannabes.

"C'mon, admit it." He slung an arm around Cissnei's shoulders. "You missed me."

"True," Cissnei replied sweetly, "but my aim has improved."


	13. Hojo: Salvager

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><p><strong>13. Hojo - Salvager<strong>

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><p>Hojo surveyed the man before him and sighed. The sigh seemed to start in his shoes and work its way up. Really, it was most unfortunate that a mind like his was constantly beset by such <em>trivialities<em>. Couldn't these people see he was occupied with something more important than this ridiculous question and answer session?

"Surely one of my researchers would suffice in my place?" He drummed his fingers on the table.

"This won't take long, Professor." The man's tone was appropriately courteous but Hojo still had a sense of being ordered about by a subordinate. It chafed. He wasn't some two-bit scientist who could be shunted from pillar to post at the whims of others. "We're very grateful for your cooperation in this matter, since you were so heavily involved with Project S."

He stopped drumming to link his hands under his chin. "I'm glad to hear it. However, if you're so grateful, it does beg the question of why you're keeping me waiting."

As if on cue another man entered with a manila folder that the interviewer accepted wordlessly. He shuffled through a few sheets of paper – was this a pathetic attempt at intimidation or did he genuinely not care _who_ he was annoying? – before focussing again on Hojo.

"You were present during the Nibelheim Incident last month, Professor?"

"Is that what they're calling it now?" Hojo was bored and saw no reason to hide it. Many things bored him, especially paper-pushers and their bureaucracy. He itched to get back to the lab but had been prohibited until he agreed to this. Since he needed President Shinra's cooperation for the foreseeable future it had seemed a small sacrifice.

His interviewer didn't reply. Evidently he was waiting for Hojo to say more.

Hojo sighed. "Yes, I was present. Is there a point to all this?"

"You actually observed what happened?"

"No, but I was there for the immediate aftermath."

"You are aware of General Sephiroth's actions during that time?"

Hojo's irritation mounted. "Am I to understand I've been summoned from some extremely sensitive research – and by sensitive I mean _time_-sensitive, as well as too delicate to leave in the hands of the ham-fisted assistants you assigned me –" He paused for breath. "Am I to understand you have brought me all the way to Midgar just to establish things that could have been ascertained _over a phone_?"

His interviewer's lips thinned.

Hojo leaned back in his chair. "I see."

The man tapped the manila file. "These are financial records. Equipment requests. Documents filled out by your department in the last month."

"I'm sure they make fascinating reading."

"They do." A spark of something unpleasant appeared in the interviewer's dark eyes. Hojo hadn't got where he was today by ignoring warning signs but he continued to feign boredom. "In the last month you've transferred a great deal of equipment to the Nibelheim facility, as well as reassigning key members of your staff to your new venture."

"It was rather underequipped, yes, and I prefer to work with people whose credentials I -" Hojo skinned back his teeth to pronounce the word like an insult. "- trust. Did Shinra expect me to work with substandard apparatus for all eternity? I think not. Not if they want accuracy and precision."

"This new venture was commissioned just after the Nibelheim Incident."

"Your precious records show that too?"

"Nibelheim was burned to the ground during the Incident."

"Tragic, I'm sure. The gene pool weeps for the loss of hairy mountain men."

"Its inhabitants were all lost." There was that spark again. Hojo's spine tingled but he didn't straighten in his chair. That would be giving too much away. "According to the records. Official reports list the death rate as a hundred percent."

"What do you want me to say? My heart bleeds for the poor inbred troglodytes and their uncivilised frozen backwater. Truly. Is there a point to all this?"

"You've abandoned all your projects here in Midgar to move to the Nibelheim Lab."

"Not abandoned," Hojo corrected. "Put on temporary hiatus. I never truly lose interest in a project until I've seen it to its conclusion, however long that might take."

This time the interviewer stiffened – not that anyone could tell. Hojo, however, noted the slight dilation of pupils, the immediate downward tick of that dark gaze and the way several of the man's blinks were a lot closer together. What had him rattled now? He wondered whether that bore further investigation. Which project, he wondered, was of interest to _this_ man? Vincent Valentine and the Chaos Project, perhaps? No, that was too long ago. Plenty of opportunities had already passed if Turk investigations were headed in that direction – opportunities not choked by politics and fear, which had flooded all of Shinra after the news of Sephiroth's violent psychosis.

Hojo flicked through mental records far more accurate and complete than any written ones he had submitted to Shinra. Yet his mind went back to the Nibelheim facility. He ached to be there at such a crucial stage. Like all artists, his first flush of enthusiasm was always strongest and this time it was especially potent. It was powered not only by his natural curiosity, his desire to _know_ more than anyone else did or could, but also by the frustration and rage at losing Sephiroth. Even more than the desecration of Jenova, Sephiroth's defeat lit a fire inside him. He had worked long and hard to create the perfect life form; too long to let it go without a fight or retribution. There was a delicious irony that the subjects he had been left with would provide both, if only he could get back to them.

"Shinra is aware of my move and support me fully. My new branch of research is, as I have already said, quite time-sensitive and demanded an immediate relocation of resources for optimal results. You'll find all the requisite _paperwork_," he said the word with a wave at the file, and laced with a sneer, the way other people would say 'cat vomit', "filed with the right people and departments."

"The right people," his interviewer repeated. "Hm."

"Are you implying something?"

"General Sephiroth's remains were never found, were they?"

Hojo stiffened. Shinra's official voice still listed Sephiroth as MIA, along with all the other inferiors he'd been with during the confrontation in the Nibelheim Reactor. He knew, however, that they were a hair's breadth from declaring them dead along with the rest of Nibelheim, despite the lack of bodies. No small amount of pressure from Hojo himself had pushed them to pass the death certificates earlier than usual. He wanted interest in Nibelheim squashed. As long as a question mark hung over Sephiroth's death people would remain interested. His work would be much easier without the interference an investigation by the wrong people – like Turks.

"Do you know something I don't?" Hojo asked mildly.

"That would defeat the object of conducting this line of questioning, Professor."

"Many words that say very little. The General's body is still an issue, yes. The bodies of his subordinates …" Hojo shrugged. "They weren't the Silver General. They're of lesser importance whichever way you look at it."

"SOLDIER First Class Zack Fair was the Second in Command for the mission, wasn't he?"

"I believe so."

"Have you recovered his remains?"

Hojo spent a moment considering his answer. Ah well, no time like the present. "Yes. His body has been recovered. It is, however, in a condition that renders it impossible to return to his family." Not that Shinra would have done if Fair really had died. Release forms signed at the outset of the SOLDIER programme were full of provisos in small and smaller print. SOLDIERs were too precious for their usefulness to end when their lives did. The things he could have learned from Sephiroth's genetic material post-mortem! He burned with the injustice of losing that data. He had already learned so much from Hewley and Hollander's results, but Project G's failure was nothing compared to the perfection and success of his own Project S.

The interviewer said nothing. He didn't query the remark but the air suddenly suggested there were unasked questions lurking like rakes in tall grass.

Rather than step on one, Hojo said, "You want to ask me what I mean by that, don't you?"

"Would you explain?"

"Mako is still something of an unknown force in its rawest form. Its effects haven't been fully catalogued and have a tendency to respond to variables and outside factors that act upon bodies during exposure – as has happened each time some fool attempts to fill in the blanks, catalogue the undocumented side-effects and ends up getting themselves killed with mako poisoning. Pre-existing genetic proclivities; prior contact with mako, whether internally or externally; the physical condition of a body at time of exposure; the amount of raw-form mako involved and the method of exposure – do tell me if I'm going too fast for you. Or perhaps you'd like me to explain the bigger words?" His smile was a terrible thing and he knew it.

"Proceed, Professor."

"Damage to organic material can be quite extensive and perilous for those who come into contact with it afterwards, as in the case of First Class Fair and his lackeys."

"Their bodies are radioactive?"

"Nuclear fusion. How quaint. I wasn't aware anybody even thought about such a thing anymore, much less referred to it in context."

"I'll rephrase."

"You do that."

"Are you saying that the remains of First Class Zack Fair come under the classification 'hazardous biological waste'?"

"That's exactly what I'm saying. Hence, they will be disposed of safely and in controlled conditions, once proper tests have been run to establish that whatever affected his mind enough to attack General Sephiroth _wasn't _connected with his mako injections and _won't_ happen again to any other SOLDIERs."

The interviewer's head jerked up. "_He_ attacked the General?"

"Of course. You thought it was the other way around?" Hojo smirked. "A surprise attack, naturally. How else could someone as powerful as General Sephiroth be defeated by an inferior model?" He laughed. "Next you'll be telling me any unenhanced grunt could take on a First Class and win."

Damn it, there was that spark again. It flared to life at the words 'inferior model'. As though _this _cretin had any right to think of the unwashed masses as anything other than bodies to be spent how their superiors saw fit? Society hadn't evolved as much as it liked to think. It was still survival of the fittest. How much blood was on this man's hands? Hojo forcibly calmed himself and returned the stare.

His interviewer seemed to be waiting for something. Then he nodded; an abrupt up and down of the head that meant nothing except a visual a full stop to the conversation. "Thank you, Professor. You've been most helpful."

"And you've been most irritating," Hojo replied. "This entire interview has been unnecessary; a waste of my time and Shinra's resources."

A lesser person might have been cowed by his annoyance. Not this one. He offered no apology, just more polite thanks and the promise of a chopper to return Hojo to Nibelheim immediately.

"The least you can do, considering the trouble you've put me to," Hojo grumbled.

Still, he reflected, it had been worth it if it prevented a Turk investigation of what had really happened in Nibelheim. There may have been interest there, but he was sure Tseng had gotten the message: it was more than his life was worth to look too deeply at the Nibelheim Incident, just as it had always been too risky for anyone to look too deeply into Valentine's desertion. Tseng wasn't stupid. Stupidly loyal to his employers, but not brainless enough to take on an enemy he couldn't possibly defeat. Hojo had more might behind him than that nosy idiot. Plus, Shinra was panicking at the loss of its figurehead. If word got out that Sephiroth had turned on them … well, they just wouldn't let that happen. If Shinra ordered it, Tseng would have to stop even _thinking_ about Nibelheim, much less looking into it.

All knowledge of Zack Fair and his team would be buried on Shinra's orders, Hojo was sure, and all interest in them as well. The last thing he needed was Tseng and his batch of well-tailored psychopaths getting in the way while he salvaged what he could of his beloved Project S.


	14. Cissnei: Covert Operator

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><p><strong>14. Cissnei: Covert Operator <strong>

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><p>"You want me to <em>what<em>?" Cissnei's voice hit a note to shatter glass.

"We've no choice," said Tseng. "They're covering everything up as fast as they can."

"There's always a choice. We _make_ choices if there aren't any. It's what we do." She recalled something Reno once said to Veld. It was typically disrespectful, as was most of what came out of his mouth, but hit the nail on the head in this case – in any situation there was Option A, Option B, Option C and Option Turk. Cissnei remembered how that actually got a smile from Veld. "We're the Department of Administrative Research. Information is what we _do_." Along with kidnappings, assassinations, clean-ups nobody else wanted and cover-ups nobody else could perform.

Except right now, apparently, when Shinra was doing its best to steal their thunder – and their right to the truth.

"It's all going to be suppressed, Cissnei. Even," Tseng said darkly, "from us. Heidegger is already making noises for us to back off. They don't want any of the real story getting out. Even the fake story is only going to be allowed limited shelf life. It's going to be swept under the carpet as soon as possible – a forcibly forgotten embarrassment."

She didn't know how to respond to that. Anger boiled inside her and she didn't want to say something she'd later regret. She wasn't Reno. Her regrets stuck around longer than it took to escape the occupant of a bed in the morning. Heidegger was a subject that still stuck in the craws of most Turks. On top of what was now going on concerning Nibelheim, the mere mention of him was enough to have Cissnei's blood boiling.

"Hojo's spinning enough lies that Shinra is running scared. They know Zack didn't attack Sephiroth unprovoked, even if the two of them did fight. Our operative gave us an inside view on what really happened out there, but Shinra isn't interested in that anymore. The documents have already been purged. It's all about damage control now – just like in Banora. Sephiroth was so high profile that this is a huge blow for the company. Hojo's using that. To what end, I'm not sure, but he's in the thick of it, controlling them all with their own panic to ensure _he_ gets what _he_ wants."

"Self-seeking son of a -" Cissnei stopped herself, trying to calm down. It wasn't working. The cracks were beginning to show. "Anyone who's met Zack would know this is too ridiculous for words. Next they'll be trying to pass everything off as some giant accident. A stray lightning bolt that torched the whole town, somehow destroyed the most powerful warrior on the planet, and conveniently killed all witnesses."

Tseng regarded her with folded arms. "The witnesses aren't all dead."

Cissnei was confused. She'd been confused when Tseng summoned her alone to see him, confused when he told her what he wanted her to do, and was getting progressively more confused the more he tried to explain. Tseng was shrewd, but he was so busy thinking three steps ahead of the game, other players trying to follow him sometimes tripped over their own feet. In a lot of ways he was still trying to impress Veld, although he'd cut off his tongue before admitting it.

Cissnei centred herself by concentrating on the perfectly straight lines of Tseng's eyebrows. "Nibelheim was torched."

"Yes."

"There were no survivors."

"None listed." He gave her what was for him an arch look, as if to say 'you know better than that'.

And she did. She cursed her own naïveté. "That _bastard_ Hojo." Fury rose inside her like a column of fire.

She sucked in a breath and held it, compelling her inner turmoil to quieten, but it was no use. Nobody who'd met Hojo could possibly like him. Nobody who'd seen him work could be anything but disgusted by him. Cissnei was aware the Turks' ethical code was skewed, but Hojo's was non-existent. He had no concept of loyalty to anyone or anything except his own ego, and possessed the pitilessness of a shark when making sure whatever garbage he dived into, he always ended up at the top of the heap. And now he had Zack, and practically the higher-ups permission to make him disappear …

"That's why you have to go." Tseng was talking again. Cissnei refocused on him.

"No. You can't send me away. Not now."

"I'm not sending you away," Tseng said in a maddeningly reasonable tone. "I'm giving you your orders. This is your assignment. Are you refusing to do your job?"

"You know that's not it."

He just looked at her.

For the first time since she was a little kid, before the Turks recruited her, Cissnei had a powerful urge to stamp her foot. It was almost more shocking than anything else that had happened lately.

"What would you do?" Tseng asked coolly. "Hop a ride to Nibelheim to follow his trail to wherever they've taken him? Maths isn't beyond you, Cissnei."

_One Turk plus one injured SOLDIER versus all of Shinra equals …_

Cissnei clenched her jaw. "Why me?"

"Because you're the best one for this."

"That doesn't tell me anything."

"I wasn't aware I had to explain my actions to subordinates."

She narrowed her eyes. _Do you think I really will run after Zack and get myself killed if you don't keep me occupied? You can't think so little of me. You know me, Tseng. You know me better than that._

Tseng's expression didn't change, but he said, "Because I know you'll do everything in your power to preserve the objective. Nobody else would be more dedicated in this task."

For some reason that hurt. She trusted Tseng with her life – had done so on many occasions, and vice versa. Now he was unapologetically manoeuvring her into a position she didn't want to be in, insulting her into the bargain, and she suspected at least one layer of his personal motives for doing all this. He was using her feelings against her, which was worse than the fact he'd figured them out in the first place. She'd never covered up her flirting with Zack, but to everyone else that was all it had been; just harmless flirting, forgotten as soon as the handsome First Class was out of sight. Tseng, however, had seen through that. Now he was using it like any other weapon in their arsenal of information.

It was that rat bastard cunning of his at work again – the reason behind him setting her on that initial surveillance detail, and sending her to that whorehouse when Aerith went missing. Of _course_ Tseng had known it was an all-female place, and of _course_ he'd known the make-up of personalities and histories of the women there would make them hostile towards men like Reno and Rude. Reno was known to frequent establishments like that off the clock, though still in the suit, and taciturn men like Rude couldn't help but generate a brutish reputation after a while of not bothering to correct people. Tseng had also known how those women would be much more receptive to a woman, and especially to a woman whom Reno and Rude deferred to – a woman whose outfit said she was too competent not to be taken seriously, but whose hair and breathy voice bespoke approachability. Cissnei admired Tseng's craftiness as much as she disliked it being used on her. No wonder he was leader of the Turks at such a relatively young age.

"Preserve the objective?" she echoed. "Can we at least do away with the policy-speak?"

"All right. I know you'll do everything in your power to keep her safe. You're smart, committed, and experienced. You've been in this department for a long time, and you're still alive. I know that you, of all people, won't hesitate to take any steps necessary to protect her. And I know that you know the reason why, too."

Cissnei was stunned. Tseng wasn't given to compliments, especially when there was no need. He was her boss. She had to either obey him or get the hell out, and there was only one way people left the Turks. You rarely got the chance to be bored in their line of work, because things were always different, you met lots of people, and you generally weren't working long enough for boredom to set in.

"Whatever's left of Zack isn't coming back." Tseng's voice was like a cudgel – hard, blunt, and it hurt like hell.

Cissnei stared hard at him. It was almost a glare. Almost. "Aerith said he's still alive."

She recalled Aerith, so different in the disguise given to her by the whorehouse madam. The woman hated Midgar, but hated Shinra even more. She'd been all too happy to hide the girl if the company wanted her, and to make problems for them. Not knowing the truth about Aerith, just that she was wanted by Shinra, the madam hadn't realised exactly what she was doing. Cissnei hadn't set her straight, either. The fewer people knew about the living Ancient, at this point, the better. Apparently there was little love lost between Lady Keshoohin and key members of the Shinra executives – all from the male half, Cissnei had noted. As long as the madam had enough plausible deniability to keep her place running if she was found out, she was gung-ho about causing problems by hiding he sweet little Flower Girl of Sector Five in a boudoir that made bra, panties and a feather boa feel overdressed.

Aerith had barely resembled herself in that strange scanty outfit, but when she spoke to Cissnei there had been no mistaking her voice. Not the timbre so much as the intonation – way too adult for a teenager, even one who'd been through as much as this one had.

"_I'd feel it if he was dead. He isn't. He's alive, out there, somewhere."_

Cissnei trusted her word.

Unfortunately, so did Tseng. "I know she said that."

"She isn't a liar."

"No, she isn't."

Cissnei processed that. The fire scorching her insides dimmed, and then died. Her heart sank and a terrible cold started where it hit the bottom of her stomach. There were worse things than death, and many ways to keep a person alive when dying would be preferable. She'd seen the inside of Hojo's labs here in Midgar before. Some of the 'specimens' made even her, with all her memories of the things she'd done, wince and taste bile.

"Oh God …"

"Do you understand why you have to go?"

_No. Yes. This is wrong. This is unfair. Turks look after their own. Zack is a SOLDIER, not one of ours. He's not even part of a mission – not one that wouldn't get us all killed, at least. I get that, but … but still, I … this is … Damn it! Why is this so hard? _

Cissnei looked down at her own palms, cut with half-moons where her nails had dug in. She already knew what she'd do next. It hadn't been preordained, but for someone who wore a suit that'd had more than one set of bloodstains dry-cleaned out, there could be no option but to follow orders. Her body knew it, even if her brain and, yes, her heart were only just catching up.

She shut her eyes. _Hojo you __**bastard**__. _ Then she held out her hand, palm up. "Give me the brief."

Tseng didn't comment on the reddening marks. "There isn't one."

"What?"

"Covert ops, Cissnei. Shinra's not letting their story get out. Neither are we. You're about to go undercover tracking a lead on AVALANCHE, and won't be heard from in a long time. Shinra still wants AVALANCHE wiped out. They won't question the methods, or the timeframe. They've got too much else to worry about right now."


	15. Naifu: Hotshot

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><p><strong>15. Naifu – Hotshot<strong>

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><p><strong>.<strong>

"Hey, Youhei?"

Youhei didn't unfold her arms or open her eyes. "What, brat?"

Naifu pursed her lips. Yeah, she was young, but there was no need for everyone to keep reminding her of it. It wasn't like she was some stupid teenager, and she bet she had more life experience than any of her teammates thought she did. Of course, since she refused to talk about those experiences, and took pains to act like they'd never happened, the other Turks could be forgiven for not treating her with as much respect as they did each other. She was scatter-brained and clumsy, and it was easy to forget she was also an assassin with a hundred percent success rate.

"I wish you wouldn't call me that."

"Whaddya want, brat?"

"Just came to see if you wanted anything to eat. I'm fixing some food, if you're interested."

"I'm not. Piss off."

Naifu was used to Youhei's temperament. When she'd entered the rec room to find the new TV was busted, she'd known who the culprit would be. She'd also known not to hold it against Youhei. It had to be tough, being the one nearest the action when Sephiroth went loopy, and being unable to do anything – especially for a perfectionist like Youhei. She was always competing with Kakutou, the only other martial arts expert on the Turk payroll, and drove herself harder than anyone to be the best when she thought she was slipping.

Well, anyone except Rod, but that was a whole other kettle of fish. Rod had a perfectionist complex like_ whoa_!

"You sure?" Naifu pressed.

"What part of 'piss off' didn't you understand?"

"The part where you stand in the corridor staring at a wall for nearly an hour and expect me to leave you alone. And the part where you seem to have this really, really big grudge against televisions when you're in a snip. C'mon. Come eat with me."

Youhei finally squinted at her. "What are you, some kind of nun being kind to the poor little peons? I ain't a charity case you need to take care of, brat, and I don't need you to come sticking your beak into my business. Piss. Off."

"But –"

"We're not friends. I don't even like you. You don't have to come looking for me. You don't have to do anything but work with me. If we're not on duty together, just leave me the hell alone. I don't need counselling just because you would in my place, and I don't feel guilty about dobbing in that SOLDIER and his pal so Hojo could make mincemeat out of them –" She stopped, annoyance crossing her face. "Just piss off, brat. Go play with your dollies or something, and leave me the hell lone." With that she stalked way.

Naifu stuck her tongue out at Youhei's retreating back.

"Yeah, 'cause that's really gonna make people think you're mature."

She whirled. "You!" She whirled back again and folded her arms. "I'm not talking to you."

Legend grinned. "Any particular reason?"

"You're a bad influence."

"Yeah, right. Like you're that impressionable."

"I wouldn't have gotten in trouble if it hadn't been for your stupid cherry bomb –"

"Which you stole from me."

"That's beside the point."

"Whatever you say, kid."

"Quit calling me that! I have a name!"

He held up his palms, surprised at her vehemence. "Whoa, cool it, hotshot. Dial down the temper."

Naifu turned her scowl into a pout. "I'm not some little kid," she said petulantly.

"Then stop sounding like one. Going after Youhei when she wants some time alone? Even you're not that thick-headed. And 'I wouldn't have gotten in trouble'? I really hope you weren't being serious." Legend sighed. "This dump could use some lightening up lately."

Naifu dropped her gaze. She missed Cissnei. They were closest in age among the Turks and, while they weren't exactly best buds, she could usually count on Cissnei not to chew her out, patronise or talk down to her, mock her, or treat her like a child.

Or maybe what she actually wanted back was the lack of tension from before the Nibelheim Incident. Everything had gone weird since then. Even Tseng, and that was saying something. Most of the Turks were jumpier than a box of hot frogs. Last time she went on patrol with Rod, he'd been tense as a high wire and barely said three words to her the whole time.

_And those three words were 'Just shut up'._ Naifu sighed. "I'm going to go fix my food now. Which roughly translates as: I'm going to go pour water on my noodles and choke them down because I'm a terrible cook but I haven't been able to eat Wutaian takeout since you ruined it for me."

"Is that a request for me to cook you dinner?"

Naifu blinked. "It wasn't, but if you're offering …?"

"I don't cook," Legend said flatly.

"Figures." She sighed. "This sucks. This all majorly, majorly sucks. With bells on!"

"I'm with you on that one, ki- hotshot. Won't hear no disagreement from me."

Naifu caught the slip, but the fact he had too, and _hadn't_ called her kid, made her feel slightly better.

Slightly.

_Hey, take your victories where you can_. "You want to share my noodles?"

Legend raised the eyebrow over his good eye. "Now there's an offer you don't hear every day. Unless it's a euphemism." His leer could have peeled paint.

Naifu tossed her head, whipping strands of dark hair from her face in what she hoped was a windswept and casual kind of way. "You wish. You're totally not my type."

"Oh? And what _is_ your type?"

"Not old letches like you."

Legend looked affronted. He drew himself up tall. "I ain't old!"

Naifu smirked. Apparently she wasn't the only one sensitive about her age – something she intended to take advantage of. "Suuure. C'mon, Gramps. I'll even mash your food up for you so your dentures can handle it."


	16. Aerith:  Evacuee

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><p><strong>16. Aerith – Evacuee<strong>

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><p>.<p>

Aerith held the scissors in her left hand. She was right-handed, but for some reason left worked best when cutting hair. Her mom's was testament to that once a month, and her knuckles would be white either way.

She wasn't trembling, which was good, but her insides felt like week-old sandwiches scraped into sweaty socks and then hurled into an oil slick. Near-misses would do that to you when you were already tenser than a high-wire.

"You're pretty close to my neck there. Think you can quit trembling long enough not to slice me up?" The words were sarcastic but the tone was gentle.

Aerith took a hank of coppery hair in her hand and hesitated. "You're sure about this?" Her hair was her pride and joy. Even in the filth of the slums she'd taken pains to keep it clean, as if that would separate her from the dead-eyed people who'd already given up all varieties of hope.

"Sure I'm sure. I'm sure squared. Sure _cubed_."

How could Cissnei joke after … but no, better not to think about that. Aerith hesitated one more time and then made the first cut.

Cissnei was such a wealth of contradictions that sometimes Aerith had no idea what to make of her. Inoffensively placid one moment, a lethal fighter the next, she'd literally seen Cissnei hurl her giant shuriken hard enough to splinter a door off its hinges, and later bumble her way through cooking rice like she'd never had to do anything so simple before. Cissnei gave the impression of a benign nursery assistant, or a helper at a care home. Yet behind her smile lurked knowledge of countless ways to a kill a man using everyday objects, and enough familiarity with espionage to make Aerith question everything she'd ever known about 'administrative research'.

As far as bodyguards went, she wasn't anything like Aerith would've predicted.

Then again, back in Midgar she'd never expected to need one. True, Shinra wasn't exactly acting out of the goodness of their hearts each time they came to recapture her, but somehow Tseng had always worked it so she was given a request she could reasonably decline, rather than orders for a capture she couldn't escape. On the whole, by the time they finally tracked her down to Midgar, then to Sector Five, and realised her biological mother had died, Shinra's interest in Aerith's DNA had waned. With the success of Sephiroth, they had their own perfect set of genes to keep them occupied and were content to leave her alone. Almost as soon as she was rediscovered, Aerith was relegated to being a back-burner project, and happily so, at least until the Nibelheim Incident, and Sephiroth's death, and Zack's disappearance beyond her reach, and how suddenly everything had changed – for all of them.

"Still shaking and getting way too close with those scissors," Cissnei warned. "Shape up, Aerith. The aim is to cut the hair, not the tips off my ears."

Aerith nodded, swallowing the lump in her throat. She raised the scissors in one hand, a comb in the other, and was about to carry on when Cissnei suddenly stopped and twisted to face her. The back of her head was framed by the cracked vanity mirror, streaked in places where the dye was either in too long or washed out too soon. She'd been wearing a hat since her roots started to show – perfectly acceptable here in the north, where _not_ wearing one made you stand out more.

And they couldn't afford to stand out. Not now, after all these months of successfully staying hidden.

"Focus," Cissnei said, the playfulness gone from her voice. "Stay focussed."

"But -"

"Stay. Focussed."

"But those SOLDIERs -"

"Probably here on an unrelated matter. Shinra wouldn't send two fully-armed SOLDIERs after one girl, even if they knew your location – which, if Tseng has been doing his job right -" Her eyes challenged Aerith to even entertain the idea he hadn't. "- they don't."

_But they might send SOLDIERs after a veteran Turk. _Bizarre as it was to think of Cissnei as a veteran anything. She was cagey about her life and her past, but Aerith put her age as not too far above her own. That could be wrong, though. Cissnei had one of those faces that looked young except for her eyes. The other sure-fire way to tell a person's age was by the state of their hands, and Cissnei's were covered by fingerless leather gloves she rarely, if ever, took off.

Aerith kept her own counsel about all of that, though. She kept her own counsel about a lot of things. Cissnei wasn't into girly chats and sharing secrets. It might have been because she was a Turk, or it might have been just the way she was. She was _so_ hard to read. Aerith had to just trust that what she told her was true, and that Tseng had also been telling the truth when he said the best thing she could do now was leave Midgar and not look back. He'd only let her say goodbye to her mom because she begged, and Aerith got the feeling that level of compassion was unprecedented for him.

Aerith didn't know the details, but apparently Tseng's advice had come just from him, not his superiors, which meant if she was caught it wasn't just her own neck on the line. Why he was taking such a risk on her behalf, she didn't know, and Tseng refused to elaborate on the reasons why. Surely he, as an employee of Shinra, was obliged to keep her close by. Yet Shinra wasn't looking for a missing Turk or a missing ex-specimen. If Cissnei's grudging bits of information were correct, Shinra thought all their Turks were safely ensconced on missions, didn't even realise Aerith had left Midgar, and would leave them both in peace as long as this remained true.

Cissnei's eyes were still trained on her. Cissnei found it easy to maintain her focus, but Aerith was antsy. She couldn't move again. She _couldn't_. They hadn't quite been on the run all these months, but they'd changed location so many times that was as good a label as any. This village had been their longest port, and Aerith was too weary to move again, but too scared to stay put with SOLDIERs around.

Not for the first time, she wished Zack was here. He always made her feel safe – protected, like nothing could ever hurt her again. Even the threat of Shinra had always seemed less when he was around – absurd when you considered he was a SOLDIER and _worked_ for the people who had made her first seven years a living nightmare. Zack was Zack, though, not just Shinra's puppet. Despite General Sephiroth being much more famous and highly regarded, Aerith thought Zack deserved the most respect of all the First Classes. Zack, at least, had never allowed Shinra to ruin him or his honour, and had held fast to his integrity no matter what the company ordered him to do.

Aerith had very clear memories of that time in the church, when Zack had stayed for hours but said only one thing into her shoulder when she hugged him from behind.

"Angeal," he had whispered, and she remembered the smell of cordite and other things in his hair, the fresh crisscross cut on his cheek, and the way his body shuddered as the heartache inside him boiled up and out. "Angeal …"

Apart from that he had just sobbed, deeply and regretfully. She'd wrapped her arms around him because she couldn't think what else to do to ease the loneliness that rolled off him in waves. It had scared her, because until that moment Zack had always seemed unconquerable. Grief, however, had overpowered him where nothing else could. From that day forward she'd seen him in a different light – a gentler, more human light that didn't just compare him with other SOLDIERs, but with regular people as well.

She could still feel him sometimes – the green sea of the Lifestream was a constant background hum in her mind, but through it glinted a thin silver wire that connected her to each of her loved ones. She could feel her mom back in Midgar, too, and the strength of that bond threw the waning one with Zack into sharp relief. It had been getting harder unless she concentrated. When she and Cissnei were deep in the south she'd barely been able to feel his presence at all. It was easier in the north; although maybe that was more to do with her natural inability to cope with high temperatures, rather than the distance between them. She'd always marvelled when Zack told her about his childhood in Gongaga, and how hot it was there. Stories of cooking eggs on bare rocks, of heat haze causing mirages, and of never daring to go barefoot in case you lost a layer of skin always captured her imagination.

As if reading her thoughts, Cissnei suddenly said, "Tell me about Zack."

"What?"

"While you're cutting my hair. Tell me about him. Let that SOLDIER take up your thoughts instead of the sub-par versions outside."

Outside the wind was blowing a gale and the snow was flying almost horizontal. It was unlikely either Third Class Atogama or Third Class Atosugi was out there, but Aerith understood what Cissnei meant. And maybe it _would_ be nice to talk about Zack. They rarely brought him up, even though Aerith knew he and Cissnei had known each other and worked together several times. Zack had talked about her, though Aerith hadn't known the Turk tailing her after his disappearance was the infamous Cissnei. She hadn't realised the woman's identity until Tseng introduced them, and said Cissnei would be taking her away from Midgar, keeping her safe until it was okay to come back – if it ever could be, according to his personal measures, which nobody else could really follow.

Cissnei turned around, hands cupping her elbows. She did that a lot, as if she was cold. She'd even done it in the south, when the sweat ran down Aerith's back and she'd stupidly asked whether Cissnei was pleased she didn't have to wear a dark suit in such weather. Cissnei had just stared at her and then turned away, leaving Aerith with the sense she'd been judged and found wanting.

Aerith began to comb up locks of hair and snip them. "He was … always kind," she said haltingly, summoning Zack in her mind and wondering which bit of his personality to describe first. "Very kind," she said, "but also strong. He was probably the strongest man I've ever known …"

After a while of her talking Cissnei interrupted. "Did he ever regret joining SOLDIER?"

Aerith was puzzled. She'd just been getting into her stride, the words beginning to flow more easily after keeping Zack locked away in her memories for months. "He never said so."

"But you think he did?"

Aerith bit her lip. "How well did you know him?"

"How well does anyone know anyone in Shinra?" Cissnei replied cryptically.

"Once," Aerith admitted at last. "I think he regretted it – genuinely wished he'd never joined, I mean – one time."

"When Angeal died," Cissnei said with conviction, as if she'd just been waiting for Aerith to say it. Once again Aerith got the feeling of being assessed against some unknown criteria.

"You know about that?"

"It's a well-documented fact if your business is information pertaining to Shinra."

Aerith looked at the crown of Cissnei's head, with its wildly sprouting tufts of auburn and streaky bottle-blonde. "He killed him, didn't he?"

"He never told you?"

"Zack was … he didn't like to talk about work things. I think sometimes he came to see me to forget for a while."

Cissnei snorted. Just a little snort, but Aerith heard it. "That'd be right. And yes, Zack killed Angeal Hewley, the First Class SOLDIER who was his mentor. It was after several incidents that I can't go into, but basically Shinra had put a shoot-on-sight order on Hewley and Zack was the one who found him. Zack himself provided details of the confrontation, but it seems Hewley attacked him and Zack had to defend himself, which resulted in Hewley's death." Her tone snapped back on itself like an elastic band, switching from business-like to almost gentle. "It screwed up Zack's head for a while. By all accounts he and Hewley had one of the best mentor-pupil relationships in all of Shinra. Zack respected Hewley enormously and already had a disinclination to kill, even in the line of duty."

"I know," Aerith nodded, thinking again of that evening in the church, holding tight to him as if he might break apart and the pieces go fluttering away in different directions if she let go. He had eventually recovered from what happened, but after that there had always been something broken inside Zack that not even the strongest healer in the world could fix.

Cissnei went on pensively, "He was always so reluctant to take a life. It made a mockery of the SOLDIER programme, to have someone like Zack as one of its premier success stories."

"He isn't a killer," said Aerith. "He has killed, but he isn't a killer."

She could see Cissnei's eyes sliding sideways, trying to focus on the face behind her without turning her head and potentially losing the wrong chunk of hair. "There's a difference?"

"Of course there is."

"What is it?"

Aerith considered her reply. "Intent. Enjoyment. Motivation. All three of those, I guess."

"So if you really mean it, get a kick out of it, or do it for personal gain you're a cold-blooded murdering bastard?"

"No, but … look, it's not that simple."

Cissnei's expression remained impassive, but she muttered something that sounded like, "Tell me about it."

"Taking lives is serious. It's something you carry with you for the rest of your own. That kind of permanence … it's like scarring yourself. Even if you kill accidentally, or in self-defence, you're still going to carry the memory of that person and what you did to them. You're still responsible, and you have to live everyday with the weight of that responsibility. A killer is someone who can carry all that around and … not think about it, I suppose. Not care. Definitely not regret."

"Except that there's a flaw in that logic. By your reasoning, people who premeditate or kill for a living are this special 'killer' thing. They _have_ to not think about it, or they'd go insane. Trust me on that one."

"I suppose …" Aerith suddenly realised what she was saying and who she was saying it to. A flush rose into her cheeks. She ran her fingers through a tuft of hair before snipping slowly, a few strands at a time, as if her entire attention was taken up with the task. "But Zack isn't a killer."

"How so?"

"Because …" She trailed off.

"Explain it to me, Aerith. He was a SOLDIER. Ergo, he was a killer."

"He _isn't_ a killer," Aerith said emphatically.

Cissnei paused before answering, "All right. Is."

"You're wrong."

"If I am, I'm not seeing it. What makes Zack so different from any guy with a sword who goes around carving up people?"

"Because …" Aerith fumbled, trying to put it into words. How to characterise the way she knew Zack wasn't just another killer like other Shinra drones? She couldn't tell Cissnei the more abstruse side of things: how nobody who touched her like Zack, who opened himself so completely and left nothing out, even the things that made him most vulnerable, could be a cold-blooded murderer. She knew instinctively that Cissnei wasn't the type of person to put a lot of credence in romantic foolishness.

With Zack, Aerith had always felt like she could let go of her inhibitions and he wouldn't judge her. He peeled away the surface layers of people to get at the heart underneath. He made you feel like he'd created a special place inside, just for you, where you'd always be safe because he'd never let go of the piece of yourself that you gave him to look after and put there.

"He carries it all inside him, every day," Aerith said, still in the same insistent tone. "All of them, each person he ever had to … while he was in Midgar, at least, the times I could see him … he lived each day to its fullest because he knew he wasn't just living for himself. He found the fun in everything; never let anything get him down, because he knew his life wasn't just for him anymore. He had to smile. He had to be positive, no matter how much it hurt, or how much he lost. He had to go on living for each life he'd taken, make sure every day counted, otherwise it would've been a … a betrayal."

"A betrayal?" Cissnei echoed.

"Of their deaths. Of everything he'd forced them to give up. All their hopes and dreams … their futures … they were his the moment they stopped breathing. His life was …" Aerith stopped. Her breath caught. "His life _is_ their legacy. Their _living_ legacy," she added, pouring as much certainty into the word as she could. Zack was alive. No matter how thin or hard to find that silver thread may become, she couldn't ever let herself believe any different. "They live through him. That's the difference between someone like Zack and a killer. Friend, enemy, bystander – it doesn't matter which side they're on, just that he makes sure they go on living by bothering to remember them. He owes it to them to make sure they aren't forgotten."

Cissnei said nothing. Neither of them did for a long time. Aerith went on, trimming here, snipping there, combing through her work meticulously even though it was awkward for her to reach and her arms were beginning to ache. By the time she stepped back and sat gratefully down on the bed, enough time had passed that she felt comfortable speaking again.

Cissnei, however, cut her off before she could say a word. "Turks and SOLDIERs have never really gotten along," she said simply. "In-house rivalry, plus a bad mix of personalities. Zack, though … he got on with everyone. It didn't matter whether they were SOLDIER, infantryman, Turk, management, or just a valet or caterer at one of those bigwig parties President Shinra always threw. Throws. Whatever. Zack was friendly with everyone, and because of the way he was with them, everybody was always friendly back, like they couldn't help it. He just had that way about him."

Aerith nodded.

"You felt like … you could trust him not just with your life." Cissnei frowned. "Turks trust each other with their lives all the time. SOLDIERs too. But you felt like you could trust Zack with more than that."

"Like what?"

Her frown deepened. With her new short haircut, she looked a lot older. The pinched look to her face added years, and the frown made them difficult ones. "Like your secrets," she said at length, grudgingly, almost bitterly, as if she wanted to know how he dared to be so presumptuous.

It was the most candid she had ever been with Aerith in all the months they'd spent together. Cissnei knew Aerith's biggest secret about Zack, and now Aerith knew hers too.

Because in a blinding flash of inspiration, Aerith understood: Cissnei was in love with him, too, even with all the baggage and problems that now brought. Suddenly a lot of things made sense – about Cissnei, about Zack, and about this expedition they were now on. Things slotted into place in Aerith's head, including the knowledge that for all the major differences in their personalities, Cissnei was actually just like Zack. Aerith had seen her stiffen when she described how Zack carried the memories of others inside him and kept them from dying completely. Cissnei did the same. Maybe she had never realised before what that meant about her nature as a self-defined 'killer', but Aerith could tell she'd been doing it for a long time; extending the lives of her victims by prolonging the memories of them in the world.

"Zack made you feel like you could be more than you think you are," Aerith said softly. "Like maybe … it's all right to want more. To think you deserve it when everything else has made you think you should just shut up and be grateful for what you already have."

Cissnei said nothing. She said it very loudly, though.

The first tear rolled down Aerith's cheek and dripped off her jaw. The second headed for the crease of her nose, so when she sniffed it went up her nostril and made her cough. Cissnei turned around, a confused and then panicked look in her eyes as she was drawn out of the thoughts occupying her mind.

"Shinra killed my father," Aerith said thickly. "My mother too, in a roundabout way. I never knew him. He died when I was only a few days old. But my mother … I remember her and … they took her from me, piece by piece, when I was just a kid. I was still … still a child, and they … to me and … since I was a baby, but to her they were worse … she tried to … to protect me while we were in the labs, but … and then all of a sudden she broke us out, and ran, and she made sure I'd be okay, but then she died and … and I've never said it, not to anyone, but I miss her. Gaia, I miss her so much sometimes it hurts. I've been without her longer than I was with her, and I love my mom, but my mother – my real mother – she … I still … I was only seven. Nobody expects you to remember pain from when you were seven. And the whole Ancient thing … the thing that got her killed … makes me different. I'm not supposed to have human frailties. Having Cetra genes means … but I hate it. I hate that I was born this way. I hate that my choices have always been to hide or be in pain at someone else's hands. I hate eking out an existence and never feeling like I'm allowed to reach for more, or to try and make my mom's life easier, because who and what I am means keeping a low profile …

"But Zack, he was different. Even though he was SOLDIER, I never felt like I was risking everything I'd built … everything I'd clawed back that Shinra took from me … I never felt like I was risking that when I was with him. A SOLDIER could have destroyed it all for me, but not Zack. He'd never … But now he's gone, and we've been running all this time without even _talking_ about him, even though it's obvious … but I can't anymore. I need to … I can't …" She sucked in a breath. "I've never been so scared of anything in all my life." She raised reddened eyes to Cissnei and whispered, "Not just the obvious. Not just the future. The present, right now, for him."

"What are you saying?" Cissnei asked hoarsely.

"I've felt things. In my dreams. He's in pain, and I can't help him. I can't _do _anything. Like my mother couldn't do anything for me when they separated us and the researchers … If this is how she felt, I can understand why she threw everything away for herself just to make sure I had a chance. Because if I could take away Zack's pain right now, I'd do it. I'd do it in a second, no matter what it meant for me. And that terrifies me, because I'm not meant to be thinking of myself and how I feel anymore, I'm meant to be thinking of … I have to … but that man … that _man _…"

"Zack?"

Aerith shook her head. It was all coming out now; clogging in the exits, surfacing piece by painful, hidden piece. "I know … I _know_ the man who took my father and mother away is involved somehow, and that terrifies me more than any of -" She gestured around, at the inside of the chalet they'd rented, at the threadbare furniture, at Cissnei and herself and the differences between them. "- this."

Cissnei stared at her. Things shifted behind her eyes, but her expression remained blank, as if her facial muscles had short-circuited and shut down while they waited for new instructions about what they were supposed to display. "I won't let anything happen to you," she said eventually.

It wasn't remotely what Aerith wanted to hear.

She'd never been so heartbreakingly lonely in her life.

She put her face in her hands and wept, while Cissnei looked on and twitched her fingers like her body wanted to move, but the rest of her had no idea of the appropriate response.

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><p><em>To Be Continued <em>

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><p>.<p> 


	17. Zack: Captive

**A/N:** Incidentally, last chapter was actually the first one I wrote for this book in the series. The preceding chapters were all written several months into the project, after some pretty significant things decided they wanted to happen later on.

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><p><strong>17. Zack – Captive<strong>

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><p>.<p>

Nothingness swirled like blankets of dark. Black upon black; shadow in shadow; murky depths plummeting down and up and out and in and everything in between. Brief pockets of light were exactly that: brief and painful and no … no … no …

Something hit from time to time. Numbness gave way to things. Emotions? What were they? Swirls of something sparkly and different. A variety of swirling that wrapped and caressed but ultimately left. Only the darkness was eternal. Emotions cut in from elsewhere, calling in thin whispery voices for him to swim to the surface, but the depths always pulled him back in the end.

_No …_

Who was that? Himself? Someone else?

_Have to … got to … get out. Have to … save …_

Threads of thoughts from before the darkness clung like spider webs. He reached, but his grasp came back clotted and unsatisfied. He was supposed to be doing something. The thought grew, cajoled by the whisperings. He was supposed to be … not in the darkness. Out in the bright, shining, painful light, where things hurt and he hurt and everyone else hurt and screamed and burned and bled and died and no … no … no …

… _he lived each day to its fullest because he knew he wasn't just living for himself …_

What?

… _never let anything get him down … knew his life wasn't just for him anymore …_

Who?

… _had to go on living for each life he'd taken, make sure every day counted, otherwise it would've been a … a betrayal …_

Familiar. So familiar. Reaching … reaching …

… _all their hopes and dreams … their futures … they were his the moment they stopped breathing. His life was …_

Fading. Come back! Come back, _please_! The darkness grappled, tugging, pulling, sucking back into its own depths like a cannibalistic whirlpool. He sagged into its embrace.

… _his life is their legacy …_

Come back. Please … come … back …

… _Their **living** legacy…_

The words followed him, wedging in him like a single speck of light as a swirl of numbing nothingness closed over him once more.

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><p><em>To Be Continued …<em>

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><p><em>.<em>


	18. Naifu: Sewer Rat

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><p><strong>18. Naifu – Sewer Rat<strong>

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><p>.<p>

Naifu crept along in the dark, straining her ears and eyes for anything she could work with. It wasn't pitch dark, but most of the lights had blown in this section of sewer, and nobody from Shinra had seen fit to replace them. The steady drip-drip-drip of unknown liquids echoed along the tunnel, together with the swish-slurp-pop of footsteps. They'd gone about half an hour when she heard a sound that made all the hairs on the back of her neck rise: the chitter of tiny rodent voices and the scritch of not-so-tiny rodent claws.

"Please tell me that's mice. Or a new breed of mutant underground squirrels."

"It's mice," Wabi deadpanned. "Or a new breed of mutant underground squirrels."

"Liar."

"Keep moving."

"I know, I know." After a minute she added, "Slave driver."

"You'd rather stay down here longer?"

"No, I'd rather be home in bed with a hot water bottle. Instead I'm down among the doo-doos looking for a runaway stool pigeon. Not the way I'd planned to spend my Friday night. And –" She froze.

Wabi came up short behind her. His glasses glinted in the dim illumination of the single unbroken light ahead, and his dark hair hung lank against his collar in the horrible damp. Naifu knew his katana was attached to his waist, and that anything rodenty would be no match against his swordsmanship and her throwing knives, but still …

"Something just brushed my foot. Something furry."

"Don't worry," Wabi replied. "It was dead."

She shuddered. "How the hell did I end up with this assignment? Did I tick Tseng off again? I was being really careful after the last time."

"That was when you accidentally blew up that chopper, wasn't it?"

"Technically I wasn't the one who set fire to the fuel tank, but I might've … facilitated the blowing up by puncturing it first. By accident and unintentionally, honest. I was aiming at the pilot, but he could cast spells and defected my needles with a shield."

"You don't have to convince me."

She sighed. Her last couple of missions had been duds, which might explain why she'd ended up on clean-up detail, tracking a snitch who'd decided to snitch Shinra's own secrets to the wrong people and then made a run for it. Yeah, like that would help him. He'd gone to ground, literally, and Naifu had been left trying not to look too disgusted when Tseng sent her down into the sewers beneath Midgar after him.

Which didn't explain what Wabi was doing down here with her. He was a straight arrow, never raising his head above the parapet or pissing people off just for the hell of it, like Youhei or Legend. Neither was he noticeably outstanding, the way Helena or Tseng seemed born for their jobs. He wasn't even quirky, like Reno or Richie, or even Naifu herself. Wabi wasn't good at joking, or a witty conversationalist, or a grump. He wasn't especially unfriendly or sociable. What he _was _good at was flying under the radar while still managing to be competent enough that nobody even considered him unable to handle a mission.

"So what did you do to land this assignment?" she called over her shoulder. "Shish-kebab something you shouldn't?"

"You should concentrate on the matter at hand."

"I'm pretty much hoping the _matter_ down here stays _away_ from my hands."

"That's not what I meant."

"I know," Naifu started to say, but as she turned to glance at Wabi, she saw him incline his head. Following his gaze, she muttered, "Oh damn."

"Something of an understatement," Wabi said as they inspected the body slumped against the side of the tunnel.

It was their snitch. A hypodermic hung from his exposed left arm. The fingers of his right hand were curled over it, as if they last thing they'd ever done was push down on the plunger and reflexively form a fist of pleasure.

"Lucid," Wabi declared after a cursory inspection.

Naifu involuntarily drew her hand back.

"It can't affect you just through skin contact."

"I _know_," she said, embarrassed. As if to prove to him she wasn't totally useless, she pressed her fingers against the side of the guy's neck. "He's gone. And he's cold, so he might've been dead for a while, but that could just be the temperature of the water down here." She looked down. "And I use the word 'water' in the loosest sense."

"This smells wrong."

"You're telling me."

"No." Wabi motioned to the needle. "He's not a Lucid addict. No track marks."

The drug had been taking the streets of Midgar by storm for some time, as slum-dwellers sought even a fleeting reprieve from their lives. There were incidents of it turning up above the Plate too, but mostly it circulated the slums. The Turks had discovered several bad consignments recently, cut with other things that made the purer stuff, while still ridiculously addictive and dangerous, seem like talcum powder mixed with water. Shinra wasn't stupid enough to think they could completely stop Lucid's distribution, but they drew the line at letting 'the rough stuff' enter their world in such a way as could also affect their upper world.

Naifu looked at the dead man. "His last information hand-over was drug-related, wasn't it? Maybe the people he was working for got hold of him first."

"Possibly." Wabi was grim – or as grim as he ever got. Maybe his face really would rupture if he formed a proper expression. "We have to clean this up on all levels."

Naifu nodded and wrinkled her nose. Prolonged exposure didn't make the stench of raw human waste any less unpleasant. "You took the words right out of my mouth. I am _so_ gonna barf if we stay down here much longer."

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><p><em>To Be Continued …<em>

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><p>.<p>

**Side-flings, Homages and Downright Rip-offs**

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><p>Wabi is a side-fling to the Japanese concept of 'Wabi-Sabi'. Check it out at en (dot) wikipedia (dot) org (slash) wiki (slash) Wabi-sabi.<p> 


	19. Legend: Opportunist

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><p><strong>19. Legend: Opportunist<strong>

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><p>.<p>

Legend smelled them coming before he saw them. "What the hell happened to _you_?"

"Don't ask," Naifu deadpanned.

"You smell like shit." He blinked. "You're _covered_ in shit."

"I said not to ask."

Wabi's expression gave nothing away either. "Sewer chase," he said simply. It was enough.

Legend grimaced. "I hate those. Any joy at the end?"

"The target was already deceased."

"Damn." Hauling a live person out of the sewers was bad enough, but dragging a dead body was all sorts of awful. If it was bloated it went right into 'I should've shot myself before I got up this morning'. Regrettably, Legend knew exactly what he was talking about on that score. At least it hadn't been a Wutaian swamp. Now _that _was some pretty nasty shit – no pun intended.

Actually … yeah, pun intended. Naifu and Wabi reeked like week-old cat puke. Her expression stank as well. She eyed Legend with the kind of stubborn defiance that instantly made him want to find what irritated her most and do it relentlessly. Unlike many of his colleagues, he could be sure of a reaction from her, and one that wasn't likely to get him thrown in the slammer, the hospital, or under house arrest again. She probably only looked that w because of her hang-up bout being taken seriously, and not being treated less than anyone else just because of her age. Truthfully, she wasn't as young as people seemed to think, but sometimes still acted like a kid, as if she was afraid to let go and finally enter the big, bad adult world.

There was something supremely wrong with the universe when he could think that bout someone with her very own kill ratio. She'd brought down more targets than anyone who'd seen her drawing on her chopsticks, turning them into puppets and badly ventriloquising conversations between them during mealtimes, could envisage.

She glared at Legend, challenging him to say anything.

"Lemon juice," he said, surprising her.

"Huh?"

"Gets rid of the smell better than soap."

"You're giving me cleaning tips?"

"I ain't gonna tell you the best way to buff your nails or braid your hair for you, Sureshot."

"He's right," Wabi interrupted. "We need to make our report."

"Use the juice first. Tsengy-boy like his office to stink of coffee and stress, not sewer gunge."

Naifu gave Legend a confused look before departing. Her face also registered a little disappointment, s if she'd been looking forward to arguing, or at least trading a few insults with him. They did that a lot – had done ever since the cherry bomb thing, as if that had given the permission to act out round each other even though they rarely worked together. In fact, Legend thought s he watched her go, he didn't think he'd ever been put on assignment with her, which was a crying shame, now he came to think bout it.

Legend liked women. He'd never made need secret of the fact. He liked the way they looked, the way they smelled, the way they sounded, and the way they felt. He wasn't, however, an idiot. Starting stuff with colleagues was a Bad Idea unless they were on board at the beginning with the idea that whatever happened was just physical.

Even so, he'd found during the war that even _that_ didn't ensure anything straightforward and uncomplicated. The civilian women he went with all eventually wanted more than he was willing to give. He told them t the start not to expect him to be their boyfriend, or any crap like that, and they always greed – until they saw his house, or realised that with a ring on their finger the small fortune he'd amassed working for Shinra would come to them if he was killed. The hungry gleam in their eyes depressed the hell out of him, to the point where he wondered why he was even surprised to see it anymore.

Contrastingly, the few times he'd been with colleagues they'd understood there was no point investing in a relationship where one of them could be dead in an hour. When that happened, it had been Legend who found himself doing the very no-nos he'd always hated in those civilian women. He'd acted like he had some sort of claim on those who hadn't asked for more than a few fumbles to reaffirm they were still alive in enemy Wutaian territory. As soon as he spotted that in himself, he pulled back, and once even asked for a transfer to a different mission before he went off the deep end.

Despite his reputation, he hadn't actually started anything with any women since returning to active service. Bizarre as it was, the fabled womaniser had become bored. His tenure under house arrest in the Cost del Sol had left him ample time to wine and dine dozens of women, and the unthinkable had happened – he'd grown bored of it. Being a Turk again had been just what he needed to stop himself going stir crazy.

And now?

Legend contemplatively watched Naifu turn the corner of the corridor. He'd never, actually, sworn off women, had he? And Naifu had enough gumption that she'd be unlike any of his previous conquests – civilian or not. There were possibilities there.

"Definite possibilities," he muttered with a smile.


	20. Naifu: Houseguest

….

**20. Naifu – Houseguest **

….

"Wow." Naifu looked around her and whistled. "Who knew an old guy could have such a cool pad."

"Hey! Less of the 'old guy' stuff." Legend reached around to press a hand to the small of his back. He straightened up with an audible crack that made her wince.

"You're totally going to have arthritis when you're older."

"If we get to be any older," Rod sniped, coming through the door behind her. "Nice place. Try any of that bomb-the-shit-out-of-the-area again before I'm out of range and I'll shove every one of those decorative baubles up your ass."

Legend rolled his eyes. "Just because you couldn't keep hold of a target, don't take your bad mood out on me."

Rod glared. "I kept hold of him. That was the problem – I kept hold right up to the point he pulled a weapon on me."

The Turks had scouted the potential SOLDIER candidate while he was in Midgar and issued an 'invitation' he could refuse, but lost him when he declined by leaving town. Things being what they were at the moment, Tseng had dispatched a team to recover him. The SOLDIER programme was running low on participants and refilling their ranks had become a priority for the Turks. Tseng had sent a team all the way out to the Costa del Sol to fetch this candidate back. They had confronted him on the shore, only for things to go south. As if secretly leaving town wasn't a big enough hint to Shinra that, actually, he _didn't_ want to get injected with mako and go fight monsters for them, the guy had compounded his message by attempting to blow away their current employees with a bazooka. Where he had gotten a bazooka was one of the many questions surrounding his case. Only some quick thinking and Legend's aim had saved Rod from becoming a messy corpse.

"It would've looked really bad if some random civilian could evade the Turks on their home turf and then take out four of them on his own," Legend said as they limped through the door. "Mind the carpet."

"Who the fuck chooses white carpets and pale wood flooring?" Rod grumbled.

"You reckon he was working alone?" Kakutou, the last part of their team, asked. There were rumours about a faction devoted to rescuing people whom Shinra had chosen for SOLDIER and smuggling them away from Midgar. Kakutou had broken the candidate's jaw and arm like fine china after he tried to blow Rod's head off and Legend's explosives made sure the bazooka would never again be useable. Until the guy's jaw was wired or healed by the other Shinra goons who had arrived, that guy wasn't answering anyone's questions.

It would be the four Turks' job to question him. Until then they had retreated to lick the wounds they would deny getting if anyone ever asked. Just to prevent anyone being stupid enough to ask, they had retreated to the beach-house Legend still called home even though he had been living in Midgar for a while now.

"I dunno. He didn't strike me as a great brainiac, so maybe someone else did the thinking to get him out of Midgar without us seeing," Legend replied. He sank onto a tasteful wraparound sofa and propping his shoes on the coffee table. It was smoked glass and looked expensive. Everything in the room was stylish and looked like it cost a lot. "We'll find out in the morning, I guess."

"I never figured you living in a place like this," Naifu said, still enraptured with the décor. It was all so _elegant_. Legend had always seemed like a man more at home with a beer and a babe on either arm. All this luxury was surprising.

He snorted. "Did you think I spent all that time in the doghouse eating microwave dinners and watching TV?" he asked, referring to the time he had been 'put on leave' after refusing to follow orders. His skills were too valuable for Shinra to just cut him loose, or so Veld had argued. As a result Legend had been confined to his house here and left to moulder until the company needed him again. Apparently he had spent the time more productively than they'd thought.

"I just never thought interior design would be your thing." Naifu bounced on an armchair, felt down the side of the cushion and yanked on the lever there. The footrest shot out and the whole thing leaned back. She grinned. "Now _this_ is more like it. It's even already pointed at the tube." She flicked an imaginary remote control at the expansive TV screen. "Pfft! Pfft! Your viewing wish is my command, mistress. Hey, I could get used to this."

Kakutou frowned. He was always so serious. He was a little younger than Legend, but came across as much older and had an almost fatherly attitude to the younger Turks. It was weird for someone whose martial arts could do severe damage. To hear him, you thought 'paternal'. To watch him punch and kick you thought 'dangerous'. To look at him just standing there you thought 'cop' – unsurprising, since he had been a detective before becoming a Turk. He wore all three masks on rotation. Naifu sometimes wondered how he reconciled the different ethics that had to be inside his head, but only sometimes. Whatever any of them had been before, they were Turks _now_, and that was what mattered.

"We should get cleaned up," Kakutou said in his gravelly voice. "Naifu, you go first."

"Aw, but I wanna poke into everything and make a nuisance of myself."

He frowned again. She would have been irritated, except that was how Kakutou acted with all the female Turks – even Youhei. If his expertise with martial arts didn't piss her off enough, _that_ made the bad-tempered woman truly cranky. Her arguments with Kakutou, and his refusal to argue back, were well-known and always attracted an audience – with Reno taking bets whenever he could get away with it. Naifu had lost gil to his little scam before, but with Reno there was no point looking for reimbursement. You knew what you were getting into when he and money appeared in the same sentence.

"Legend, how many bathrooms do you have here?" Kakutou asked.

Naifu protested. "I wouldn't take _that_ long!"

"You're a girl," Rod exhaled noisily. He was a good partner, Naifu had learned, but a lousy conversationalist.

"Girls don't automatically take longer in the shower!" Naifu continued to protest.

"It's not about that," Kakutou said. "It's about privacy."

Naifu paused. There wasn't much she could say to that. "Oh." She was so unused to anyone giving her special treatment for being a girl, this threw her off balance.

"Two bathrooms," Legend replied easily, like it meant nothing to him. "One upstairs, one downstairs, or there's the swimming pool if you're really desperate to wash off.

"You have a pool?" Naifu echoed.

"He had to get the beach bunnies to stay in their bikinis somehow," Rod muttered.

Legend gave him the finger before adjusting his eye-patch. A reddened ring, stained with black dust from the explosion, showed where it had cut into his cheek over time. Naifu wondered what the patch was made of and what it would feel like to touch. Then she wondered why she wanted to know something so icky. To distract herself, she rocked back in her recliner, drawing her knees to her forehead, and used the momentum of the rock to somersault to her feet.

"Can't you do anything without making a song and dance about it?" Rod complained.

"I call the bathroom with the biggest bathtub," she declared, ignoring him. "It's been a long time since I had a good, hot soak. It's always five-minute showers in itsy-bitsy cubicles when we clean up at Shinra." It didn't have to be, but privacy meant sacrificing time. She always made sure she was alone when she stripped off. _Always_.

"Upstairs bathroom for you," Legend said. "Unless you want the pool."

She raised an eyebrow at him, ignoring the slight tightness in her stomach at the thought of putting on a bathing costume. She wasn't bothered about being the only girl amongst three men, but the thought of revealing so much flesh. She never let anyone see her naked. Even in the females-only showers she waited for the other Turks to leave, then ran in and out of a cubicle so fast there was no chance of anyone accidentally walking in and seeing her. The curious looks would have taken her back too far, even if they never asked the associated questions.

"Puh-lease. I don't _do_ swimming pools, especially ones you probably only installed to get women to show you their goodies. I don't even want to think what might've happened in there, thankyouverymuch."

"Hey," Legend protested. "I changed the water."

"Ewwwww!"

He raised his own eyebrow, but shrugged. "Your loss. Temperature controlled and full of healing salts and shit like that. Swimming in it's the best thing to work out the kinks when you're sore from a hard day's work."

"Pass. I'm gonna go investigate this bathroom and see if it has gold faucets and quilted toilet paper. Who knew you were such a homebody?"

"My cleaning woman."

"That is so sexist! Why couldn't you have a cleaning man?"

"The maid outfit would look too gross."

An image of hairy legs and fishnets filled Naifu's mind. She shuddered. "That is just sick and wrong."

….

To Be Continued …

….

**Side-flings, Homages and Downright Rip-offs**

….

_Kakutou had broken the candidate's jaw and arm like fine china after he tried to blow Rod's head off and Legend's explosives made sure the bazooka would never again be useable. _

- Kakutou is Japanese for 'fist fight'.


	21. Cloud: Transient

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* * *

><p><strong>21. Cloud: Transient<strong>

* * *

><p>Cloud drifted. He couldn't be sure for how long, or even where he was in the real world. In his mind he drifted like flotsam on the tide. Sometimes he was aware of shifting, jolting, or stinging pain that came and went. Sometimes he even registered voices and pulled himself high enough to peep out over the rim of his own consciousness. Eventually he always fell back, and the memories of what he'd seen and heard dissolved in the tide as he went drifting again.<p>

He imagined he was a little kid. Nibelheim, his mind whispered. Nibelheim. There was something important about the town, but he couldn't grasp what, so he went backwards in his thoughts trying to find it. He kicked snow, climbed trees, crossed that damn rickety bridge with Tifa and listened to the bellows of tupping dragons, wyverns and other things from the forest late at night.

He used to lie in bed and listen to them, wondering whether he'd ever go on a dragon hunt. You had to be tough to hunt dragons. Even if the men did let him go, would he die like his dad? People always said he was useless. They called him weak and stupid, even though he wasn't. Well, not stupid, at least, and he'd worked all his life not to appear weak. Still people compared him to his father, and never in a good way, which always made his mother saddest.

Her face undulated into view like a pond after a rock had been thrown into it. Her smile, her cheeks, her hair rippled into view, as she held out her ladle and said something … something Cloud couldn't hear properly …

"Mom?" He tried to go to her, but she pulled away without actually moving her legs. He tried again, but she kept moving away from him. He started to run, but she was fading, darkness invading the space where she'd been. "Mom!"

Flames erupted around him. Cloud threw up his arms, but they didn't burn. He tried to go through, but it was like fighting a strong current. He was borne back and couldn't see his mother any more.

"Mom!" He sounded desperate now. For some reason he wanted – no, _needed_ – to see her again. It was vital and he couldn't say why. "Mom! _Mom_!"

"… say something?" echoed a voice from someplace distant.

Cloud drew a breath that wasn't really a breath. "MOM!"

"… lips are definitely …"

"… increased brain activity …."

He sank back, suddenly exhausted and unable to reach his mother no matter how hard he tried. The midge-like voices kept buzzing, but he wasn't listening. They were random thoughts, nothing worth taking any notice of – not compared to the sudden weight in his chest. He felt bereft, but he couldn't remember _why_.

Something had happened. Something terrible. To his mother? To himself? To someone else important to him?

All of the above?

"… more docile specimen …"

"… kidding? It's practically _dormant_ …"

Nibelheim. He _had_ to try harder to remember why that was significant. What had happened there? And where was he right now? What was going on? Yet each time he grabbed for the thoughts they liquefied and ran through his fingers like he was trying to grab handfuls of water.

Cloud drifted, still searching for answers that slipped farther and farther out of reach.


	22. Naifu: Taken

.

* * *

><p><strong>22. Naifu: Taken<strong>

* * *

><p>Naifu scrunched up her face. Her left side was on fire and she couldn't feel anything below her right elbow. She wanted to curse, but her mouth felt too rubbery. She leaned backwards against the smooth wall to catch her breath. How had this happened? She looked over at the body and then looked away. <em>He<em> couldn't tell her.

Pushing herself onto her good arm, she spat out a mouthful of bloody saliva and wished she knew the layout of the Costa del Sol better. Where the hell was she? She could hear ocean waves and smell salt. Blood usually masked all other scents, so she had to be pretty close to the shore. Staggering to her feet, she felt her way along the wall. She had crashed into it several times during the scuffle. Her head hurt from a combination of that and the wasn't-dead-at-the-time guy's punches.

She stumbled suddenly, teetered and fell. The distance was bigger than she expected.

"Shit," she tried to say. It came out more like 'shish'.

She struck the ground and sprawled, fire filling her battered limbs. She swallowed the blood this time instead of spitting it out. Maybe she needed the iron. You couldn't have too much iron in your diet, right?

She considered just lying there for a while, but that was stupid. The first rule of survival was never let yourself be caught off guard. If you weren't working at a hundred percent capacity that held especially true. Right now she was barely fifty percent. Maybe less.

Shish. Totally shish.

Her eyes struggled to focus. She lay on her back, face turned towards wherever she had fallen from. She could make out a dark gaping square, which coalesced into the open mouth of an industrial packing crate – one of those big metal behemoths that needed cranes to load them onto freight ships. She had woken inside and woken fast out of necessity, so there hadn't been much time to take stock of what was going on beyond _'Someone is trying to kill me and I don't want to be killed'_. Now she had more time to take stock, but her body cried out for her to take notice of it instead.

She rolled onto her front. A deep grind inside meant bones were broken. She tasted blood.

_Where the hell is my Phoenix Down_? she thought frantically.

All Turks were issued with one Phoenix Down to carry wherever they went. She hadn't ever used hers. A cursory inspection revealed she had been frisked somewhere between walking with the sun on her back and fighting for her life in a metal box.

Her throwing knives had also been missing when she reached for them during the fight; as were the shuriken inside her jacket. The discovery had flummoxed her for maybe two seconds. Hand-to-hand wasn't her forte, but being partnered with Rod had taught her a few things. Rod's style wasn't as polished as Kakutou or Youhei, but he had learned from street fighting, which gave him creativity and a streak of viciousness their polished techniques lacked. The bozo who had grabbed Naifu off the street hadn't bargained on her being able to kick his ass without her weapons. Idiot.

Or was that idiots plural? She heard voices. Did her attacker have friends? Damn it, she couldn't afford to be caught lying down on the job.

Getting up wrenched things that didn't need to be wrenched. Her belly started the dull ache that told of recent throwing-up and imminent need to do it again. She tamped down the urge, already thinking of places to hide. Heroic last stands were fine and dandy except for the middle word. She was too damn tired and sore for another fight, but she didn't plan to die either.

Her heart beat like a bird in a cage. Was she on the docks? That made sense. Where could she hide on the docks? Maybe behind the crate. Or maybe if she somehow got into the water without drowning, she could work her way from support-strut to support-strut until she hit a safer quayside –

"Naifu?"

Crap, they knew her name. Did that mean this hadn't been a random attack? Was this Turk-related? Of course it was; it was _always_ Turk-related when you were a Turk.

"There she is! Over there!"

"Naifu!"

Wait one cotton-picking second …

"Kakutou? Rod?" She turned, just as her knees told her to go screw herself and put the 'out to lunch' sign on the door. They buckled. She pitched forward, narrowly missing another face-plant. A pair of strong arms caught her just in time.

"Easy there, Sureshot," their owner murmured. "I gotcha."

"Legend," she murmured vaguely. "Your … town … sucks …"

The world closed in and went dark.


	23. Rod:  Failure

.

* * *

><p><strong>23. Rod – Failure<strong>

* * *

><p>"How the fuck could this happen?" Rod demanded. "They snatched her off the fucking <em>street<em>? Bullshit._ Bullshit_!"

Kakutou's face held as much expression as a totem pole. "Evidently some associates of the SOLDIER candidate in custody decided to make a decisive move against us in an attempt to get him back."

"They were gonna _ransom_ Naifu for him?"

"Evidently they thought, as a female, she'd be the easiest mark."

Rod had seen what was left of the guy in the crate. "Well _evidently _they got _that_ wrong," he said, mimicking Kakutou's tone. The guy sounded so much like a cop it made him sick. He had no love of that kind of law enforcement and hated it when Kakutou reverted to type.

The drugs the bastards gave Naifu had worn off early. Not having her weapons on her hadn't inhibited her ability to fight back like they had hoped. She had made mincemeat of her guard before making a break for freedom. Too bad the guy had been built like a brick shithouse and beaten her six ways from Sunday before she shattered his nose with such force it sent bone fragments into his brain. Desperation lent her strength she didn't usually possess, but that had leeched from her when she hit open air. She was nearly done by the time Rod, Legend and Kakutou found her.

Rod glanced at the ceiling. Legend's house had multiple guest rooms. In one the man himself and a Shinra medic were working on Naifu, putting her back together as best they could. He had slapped her with his Phoenix Down at the scene, yanking her back from the brink, but only proper healing techniques were going to restore her to full strength, or even half strength. She had taken more than an average beating. The cowards who saw her going to the bakery to buy muffins for breakfast had obviously resented Shinra for its treatment of their pal, and taken their frustrations out on her while she was unconscious. She had gone into the crate-fight already injured, her insides damaged in ways Rod couldn't understand, but which still made his blood boil.

He had thought coming to the Costa del Sol would be a break from always looking over his shoulder. Alejandro hadn't yet made good on his threats, but rather than reassure Rod, it had only made him increasingly uneasy. Naifu made jokes about his twitchiness, but she didn't understand the real reason behind it. Rod's pride wouldn't let him tell her the truth – that he, the big bad Super Turk, was scared of threats made by some two-bit nobody gangbanger in a Midgar slum. He would be laughed out of the department. Rod had an overdeveloped sense of pride. Letting his colleagues know his old friend had threatened him would only compound the blows it had already taken, especially since nothing had actually happened since that conversation in the alley.

The extended mission out here had been a welcome break, even if it was technically still work. At least out here Alejandro had no influence. Rod had thought he could relax for a few days.

Naifu wasn't a bad partner. She wasn't a bad person, either. Rod had grown … fond of her. Unexpectedly so. She could be annoying as a stone in his shoe, and sometimes he wanted to stuff a sock down her throat just to make her _stop talking_, but she was the best partner he had been given during his tenure as a Turk. Their fighting styles and weapons complemented each other, as did their personalities. Where Rod was introverted, Naifu effervesced. She took informants off guard, her open manner getting them to reveal more than they might have otherwise. Rod intimidated them with silence and sudden, short bouts of noise and violence. Where she wanted to rush in like a fool, he stood back and assessed the situation first. Where he looked like what he was – a serious threat to anyone who crossed him – her tiny shape and infectious smile constantly made opponents underestimate her. As a team, they worked.

Except for today. Today he hadn't been there while she was getting the shit kicked out of her by people who shouldn't have even been able to _touch_ her. That bothered him. He didn't like the feeling.

You could have sharpened carbon steel on his tone. "I fucked up."

Kakutou frowned at him. "How?"

"I should've been there."

"Don't be ridiculous. She went out for muffins. None of us knew what was going to happen."

"I should've been there," Rod said stubbornly. "Partners are supposed to stick together."

Some people have the ability to communicate 'oh-for-crying-out-loud' with just the downward tick of their mouth. Women mainly, but Kakutou was part of the small male contingent who could also do it. "As I've been told repeatedly, our female colleagues don't need protecting simply because they're female. Chivalry isn't something wholly embraced by Turks."

"That's not what I meant," Rod protested, at the same time wondering whether that was part of it. Was he getting all protective – such an alien feeling it made his skin crawl – because Naifu was a girl? Maybe. He had never endured gallantry before. It felt kind of like measles. "I'm her partner. We're supposed to watch each other's backs."

"In the field. Not on the way to buy baked goods."

He grunted.

Kakutou watched him, expression unreadable. "Listen, I've been working for a long time; and not just as a Turk. I know you were a street kid. You probably think you know more about survival than me. Even so, let me give you a piece of hard-won advice: you can't save everyone all the time."

Rod stared right back at him. "Your idea of a pep talk sucks."

"Okay, maybe that was a bad way of putting it. Let me rephrase: you're not responsible for every bad thing that happens to everyone you know. You can only do your best -"

"Spare me the clichés."

"- and if that's not enough, that's all there is to it," Kakutou went on doggedly "It's not enough. You don't whine about it. You might as well whine about needing to blink or breathe oxygen. Some things can't be changed just because you want it badly enough, so you pick yourself up and move on."

"Suck it up and move on? That's your big advice?"

Kakutou said nothing.

"Is that what happened to you?" Rod sniped. "Is that how you became a Turk?" Kakutou's personality was so _un_-Turk-like, Rod wasn't alone in wondering how the hell the man ended up in the department.

Kakutou looked away. He didn't answer for a long time. Rod began to think he had been dismissed. When Kakutou finally did speak it was curt, frustration swelling below his words like air bubbles in a tar pit. "This isn't the first time I've been to the Costa del Sol."

"And that has _what_ to do with this conversation?"

"Shut up, pup." His tone surprised Rod. Since they found Naifu, Kakutou had been the one calming _him_ down. "This town isn't as sunny and liberated as it likes to make out. It has its own underbelly; it's just better at keeping it hidden."

Rod sensed a shift in the atmosphere; a reversal of some sort.

"When I was a PI," Kakutou went on, "I spent my time exposing that underbelly and saving whatever souls I could from it. I didn't always succeed, but I kept trying. I kept at it for years; poured my heart and soul into fighting the good fight, rescuing people I recognised as innocents. I refused to work for anyone I didn't think was deserving enough. It was judgemental, maybe, but that's how it was. If they were scum, I didn't want to work for them. The only problem was, the ones I thought deserved my help generally didn't have two gil to rub together. Some days I couldn't afford to feed myself or pay my medical bills. I'd literally be falling apart after some bad jobs, but I couldn't pay for a doctor because I had no money."

"Sounds like a crappy existence."

"Seeing the things I saw, year in and year out, getting beaten up and beaten down, and then seeing it happen all over again anyhow … it wears a guy down. I sometimes wondered why I even bothered. I didn't make much of a difference. I was just one man, and while I was good at what I did, most of the time I got my ass handed to me and never collected on my paycheque because I hadn't finished the job, or my client was dead, or I already knew there was no way they could pay me. I'd think about giving up. Then I'd find some innocent who didn't deserve what was happening to them and I'd get sucked back in."

Kakutou paused, staring off into space. Rod watched him, wondering how this story connected with the current situation – and what had prompted the sudden confession. He and Kakutou weren't close. Thinking about it, he couldn't think who Kakutou _was_ close to. Maybe that explained it.

"This town is like the sharks in its ocean," Kakutou said at last. "You think it's calm because it looks that way on the surface, but it likes to take a chunk out of you when you least expect it."

"So … what? You should punch the place on the nose to make it go away."

"Something like that." Kakutou dropped his gaze, raised it to Rod, and then dropped again.

"So why'd you leave?"

"Same story as a lot of folks. I fell for a girl."

"A client?"

He nodded. "She was in big trouble. My hero complex kicked in. We … connected. Or so I thought. I fell hard for her – really thought I loved her. Then it turned out she wasn't as innocent as she wanted me to think. I was in deep before I figured out the truth: she was wanted by Shinra and I was the chump she'd gotten to take on her pursuers and 'make them go away'. Guys fight harder for girls they're in love with, even if those girls don't actually love them back. By the time I got a clue, I was facing off against the company and swimming way out of my depth. Only one of us survived the confrontation with the Turks pursuing her."

Rod didn't have to say the rest: not her.

"I only made it because I was willing to make a deal with the devil. Veld pulled a lot of strings. He thought I could be a better Turk than a detective." Kakutou shrugged, like compromising his morals was no big deal. "Turns out he was right."

Rod tried not to let anything show on his face. "Am I supposed to say 'thank you for sharing'?"

Kakutou snorted with laughter. "No."

"So what's with telling me all that?"

"You asked. And you're more like I was at your age than you'd like to think. I thought I was supposed to protect every single client with my life, but I only had one life, and if I kept trying to spend it, I depleted its value."

"The hell?"

"Don't blame yourself for Naifu. It was unfortunate but it wasn't your fault."

Rod's jaw set. "Did you tell yourself that when that girl you fell for died?"

Kakutou's face didn't change, but dust motes crackled against his skin and the angry heat rolling off him. "Every damn day." Abruptly he got up and stalked to the kitchen. Rod heard him yank the fridge door and pull out something glass. The hiss-pop of a bottle cap followed.

Rod stuffed his hands in his pockets and glanced at the ceiling. This was taking way too long. The longer the healing, the worse the injuries, and the more his anger stoked. When would they be _done_?

* * *

><p>.<p> 


	24. Naifu: Survivor

.

* * *

><p><strong>24. Naifu: Survivor<strong>

* * *

><p>Naifu blinked back to consciousness and immediately wished she hadn't. Everything hurt. <em>Everything<em>.She felt like she had tried to tackle a tree. Not just any tree, either; a very large tree with an extensive root system and sharp bits all over. She thought about shutting her eyes and pretending she was still unconscious. Perhaps she could fool her body into stopping pain signals from reaching her brain, like a secretary holding all calls to a super-important boss.

The idea only lasted a second. That was how long it took to realise she was on her back, in a bed with a sheet pulled up to her armpits. Her arms were outside, pinning the sheet to her body like a second skin. Little of her outline had been left to the imagination, not least of all because she was naked underneath.

Panic suffused her, followed by fear and shame. She shook off the fear and panic, though the shame stuck around, making her grip handfuls of bed-sheet and curse inwardly. What the hell was going on? She struggled to sit up and her body cried out against it.

"Whoa there, Sureshot. Move too fast and you're gonna undo all the good that medic did."

She turned to the voice. Legend sat in a ridiculously bohemian rattan chair, long floating white curtains billowing against the back of it from the window behind him. His suit looked as out of place as a high necked dress at a lingerie party. He had one leg crossed over the other, ankle balanced on his thigh. She recognised the archetypal masculine pose. His single eyes fixed unwaveringly on her face.

The sheet felt very, very definite against her skin. Very thin, too. Costa del Sol was hot, so of course nobody slept in duvets. You could almost tell whether a girl had shaved through the bed linen.

_Shit_.

Humiliation rose inside her like a column of ice. She felt self-conscious in a way she hadn't in a long time. Why would she? There had been no reason for embarrassment about her body to creep in. Turk suits were the ultimate cover-up and she had never let a relationship get physical. She wasn't frigid, it had just never appealed. Reno sometimes made cracks about her playing for the 'other team', but she took the jibes with promises of hot-sauce in his coffee and itching power in his undies. She took cracks about her sexuality better than cracks about her age, in fact. She wasn't some closet romantic dreaming of her happy ending in the arms of some guy – or girl – so she had never put herself in the position where showing her body was an issue. Ever since she first signed her contract with Shinra she had worked to conceal her body. It had become second nature. She had even reached the stage where she didn't think about what her suit concealed anymore; it was a non-issue.

So her feelings now were doubly shocking. It wasn't that Legend, famous womaniser, was staring at her in such a compromising position as naked in his bed. It was what he may have seen while she reaching this stage that made spine try to concertina into the back of her head. She was very different than any other naked girl he had ever got into this big double bed.

She had trained herself not to look in the mirror until she was fully suited up. Brushing her teeth without getting chalky spittle on black fabric was an art-form, as was putting on deodorant without blinding herself in the dark. She had started cutting her hair short so she could comb it without putting the light on. If she could get away with a brief glance in the half-darkness of dawn or dusk, that was fine. Fabulous. Fan-dabby-doozy.

She never looked at herself with the kind of intensity he was. Not with any kind of intensity.

Her fists cramped. She had clutched the sheet to herself when she sat up, like some stupid swoony romance novel heroine. "Where am I? No, wait, scratch that; it'll be my second question. First question: what the hell happened between when I shut my eyes and five seconds ago?"

"We brought you back to my place. Shinra sent a medic. He fixed you up and then left. You were zonked and needed recovery time. You woke up when you were done sleeping."

"That's all?" She raised a sceptical eyebrow. The room spun. She raised a hand went to her forehead, even more like a romance heroine. Her other hand remained cemented against her collarbone, holding the sheet in place over her front.

"I thought I said for you to be careful," Legend said in a low voice.

She bit back the pain. "You say a lot of stuff I ignore." A groan worked free, but not because her brain felt like it was trying to jump ship through her eye sockets. Embarrassment set it loose from her vocal chords. "Did I really get jumped by amateurs on my way to buy muffins?"

"Not so sure about the amateur part, but pretty much, yeah."

"That's embarrassing."

"I'd sure be embarrassed."

"Well _you_ can put a cork in it." Naifu glanced around. The rest of bedroom was as bohemian at the chair; all flowing fabric, wicker furniture and pale colours. Very relaxing. Too bad she was wound tighter than a spring in a clock. If she stood up she would snap the tension and drill right through the floorboards feet-first. "Where's my suit?"

"It got shredded."

More panic. Tasted like bile. She needed her suit. She forced the panic down and realised the bile was real. "Gonna hurl!" she garbled.

Legend rose and brought what looked like a plastic washing up bowl to her face. She upchucked what little was in her stomach and heaved until her chest ached. Hair clung to her cheek, wet with sweat or puke or whatever. Legend gently brushed it back but she was too busy hurting to smack him away.

"By … the amateurs?" she coughed.

"By you fighting back," he replied easily, as if he wasn't holding a bowl of her spew and hadn't seen her scars.

Memory drip-fed the details. She glanced at her knuckles. They weren't torn and bloodied anymore. Neither was her face. Nothing on her showed any sign she had been in a fight, let alone nearly died in it. Well, not this time, anyhow.

Abruptly she wanted to look under the sheet, but even as the urge rose, she knew she would only see what she had been seeing since –

_Sack smell and blood smell and sweat smell and fear smell and who's crying who's screaming who's laughing I hate this I hate this I don't want to die –_

She shut her eyes against the tide of memories. She knew what she would see.

Veld had set healers on her at the beginning of her training. They had done what they could, but scars were scars. You couldn't cut open old wounds and re-heal them smooth, the way you could re-break bones that had healed crooked. All you got was uglier, knobbier scars. Kind of like people, actually: you cut and healed and cut and healed people's spirits and all you got was bitterness and cynicism that wept like pus if you poked the old wounds.

She retched some more. Legend tried to steady her shoulder but she shrugged him off.

"D-don't touch me!"

He pulled the hand back, palm raised. "Okay, Sureshot."

Naifu breathed in, despite the puke smell. "I remember that part. Did I kill the guy?"

"Your guard? Yup. The guys who kidnapped you? Nope. We picked them up near where we found you."

"But will they ever play the piano again?" The joke fell flat. She hadn't expected any less. She hadn't said it to get a laugh, just to break the tension created by Legend staring like she was a bug under a magnifying glass. She pushed back her shoulders and squared her chin. The best defence was a good offence, right? "You gonna make me drink that or something?" She nodded at the bowl.

He retreated to the en suite. She heard the sound of running water and the toilet flushed a couple of times. When he returned it was without the bowl. He stopped in the doorway, still staring.

"What?" she demanded.

"Nuthin'."

"Bullshit. Getting an eyeful while you can, huh? Or did you already do that?" She raked wet hair from her forehead with her splayed palm, realising too late that she had just wiped her own vomit into her hairline. Nice. "What are you even doing in here, anyway? Shouldn't the healer be doing the whole observe-the-patient schtick?"

"He had another case to get to. I said I'd keep watch until you came to, since it's my house and it was my Phoenix Down that saved your ass from dying."

She blinked, momentarily thrown. Okay, that part she hadn't known. "Oh. Um … thanks." She waited a beat. "Just my ass? The rest of me didn't merit saving?"

Legend shrugged without blinking.

"You're creepy when you stare like that."

"It's the eye patch."

"No, the eye patch is roguish. The creepiness is aaaall you. I need clothes."

"You need bed rest."

"Clothes."

"Stay in that bed."

She shifted to swing her legs over the side of the mattress, trying to hook her elbows under the sheet even though it was too late for modesty. "No, I need to –"

"Cover up more? Why bother?"

She froze, but only for a second. "Pervert. I knew you'd already gotten an eyeful."

"The medic needed someone to hold you down while he worked. You were thrashing a lot. You gave him a shiner. I already carried you home and up the stairs, so I stuck around to finish the job. Wasn't nuthin' perverted about it."

"Yeah right." She wondered if the desire to toss her cookies yet again was an after-effect of the beating-and-healing combo, or a psychosomatic response to knowing he had seen her naked. Probably a bit of both.

She felt laid bare and not just in the literal sense. She felt exposed and violated: a smaller version of that long-ago emotional cocktail and no more enjoyable the second time. She felt vulnerable without her suit. Clothes may not make the man, but they made this woman.

Damn it, he was still _staring_.

"If you dare feel sorry for me," she gritted like she was chewing broken glass, "I will personally hang your balls from the light fitting. And you won't be attached."

Legend raised his hands. "Sounds fair. But do I get to exchange saving your life for a question?"

"No."

"Tough shit, I'm asking it anyway."

"It happened a long time ago," she replied pre-emptively. "I don't like to talk about it."

"Bully for you, but I was actually gonna ask whether this has turned you off baked goods."

"Excuse me?"

He shrugged. "I'm famished. I was gonna make subs with the works – ham, cheese, pickle, salad, chutney that burns your mouth, those little snot-green olives nobody eats, plus the rest – but if you're gonna have flashbacks and run screaming from anything outta the bakery, I'll be damned if I waste the effort fixing one for you."

She stared at him. Then her jaw clicked back into place. Her stomach finally unclenched. "How much of a wuss do you think I _am_? Bring on the food! I could eat a horse and all four of its shoes." She shifted sideways and her stomach gurgled rebelliously. "Um … actually, could I get a rain-check on that? And get out of my way, or your décor in here will be radically and rapidly different in a pebble-dashed, icky kind of way."


	25. Rod: Partner

.

* * *

><p><strong>25. Rod: Partner<strong>

* * *

><p>Rod was aware of Legend behind him only when he spoke. That was … irritating in the extreme. So irritating that he refused to whirl in surprise, instead riveting his gaze to the opposite wall and clamping his arms in their sullen fold.<p>

"How much do you know about Sureshot?"

"What?"

"Naifu," Legend qualified, as if that was what Rod had been referring to. "You're her partner, right?"

"Hmm."

"Is that a yes or a no?"

Rod finally turned and met Legend's good eye. Always unnerving how someone with no depth perception was still so good at finding his targets and bombing the shit out of them. "I know what I need to know."

"Which is?"

"What anyone needs to know about their partner: that I can trust her to watch my back and not let me get killed, so long as I do the same for her."

"Very clinical."

"Is there a point to this conversation?"

Legend shrugged. "Just wondering."

"You never 'just wonder'. What do you find so fascinating about my partner?" Rod narrowed his eyes. "You're not making her into another one of your conquests."

"Look who's coming over all protective-big-brother," Legend half-laughed.

Rod continued to squint suspiciously at him. Something had happened after Naifu was attacked – something with Legend, which neither of them would talk about. Naifu hadn't actually said anything, and hadn't acted out of character, considering what had happened to her, but Rod discovered he was more attuned to her behaviour than he'd thought. Something was up. She'd been subtly uneasy when Legend entered the room, in a way she wasn't when Kakutou also came in. Rod was almost inclined to think Legend had copped a feel while Naifu was unable to say no, but the idea wouldn't stick. Naifu wouldn't be uneasy, she would've kicked any groper's nuts right into his neck, fellow-Turk or not. Plus, Legend was a womaniser, but he wasn't that kind of guy. Nevertheless, tension hung between them like a cloud waiting to rain, and Rod didn't like it.

Legend shrugged again. "Your face will freeze like that if the wind changes."

"Asshole."

His smirk made Rod want to break things. Then it flickered ever so slightly. Somehow Rod wasn't surprised when he heard Naifu's voice behind him. Legend had seen her enter the room over Rod's own shoulder.

"What are you two numbskulls getting all macho about? All my oestrogen just curled up whimpering in the corner."

"You okay, Sureshot?"

"I'm gonna start charging money every time someone asks me that. I'm not the first Turk to get in a fight, you know."

Legend was going to get whiplash from all that shrugging. Rod shoved his hands in his pockets and ambled to the door, only to find his way blocked by Kakutou.

"They're ready for us."

"Joyous joy of joyousness," Naifu sighed. "A-recruiting we will go, a-recruiting will we go; high ho, the derry-oh, a-recruiting we will go."

"Your singing voice sucks, Sureshot."

"My tattered ego thanks you."

Rod watched the exchange, knowing there was more there than first appeared. He wondered why he couldn't figure out what they were really saying. Naifu was _his_ partner.

"Hey, Naifu?"

She paused. "Yeah, Rod?" Her gaze was clear and unambiguous. Too clear. And nobody was that unambiguous. The rocks in clear water were often the sharpest when you stepped on them.

Rod shook his head. "Nothing. You're really okay?"

She rolled her eyes. "I got a clean bill of health, didn't I?"

"When you'd stopped yawning all the colours of the rainbow."

"Hey, I don't respond well to forced healings. It's not that unusual. Lots of people get jumpy stomachs. I remember you looking pretty green when you had your broken arm healed back in Midgar."

Rod didn't feel reassured.

_Damn it, I have enough to worry about, without adding this kind of crap to the pile. I do __**not**__ need my life to get any more complicated_, he thought savagely, but still couldn't let go of his disquiet. The Costa del Sol didn't have Alejandro, but it was a lot less peaceful than he'd thought when relaxing in Legend's holistic swimming pool.


	26. Legend: Confidante

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* * *

><p><strong>26. Legend: Confidante <strong>

* * *

><p>Well this was another fine mess he'd gotten himself into.<p>

How had that happened, by the way? The mess, that was. He was sure he hadn't meant to get so serious about Naifu. She was supposed to be a fun distraction, someone to break the monotony and jazz up the boring parts of his life. Even if they'd just stayed colleagues, or friends, 'serious' had definitely been off the agenda. Instead, here he was getting all maudlin and grim, his thoughts knotted with her at the centre.

You'd never guess to look at her. Legend never would have suspected she had anything in her past darker than the things she'd done as a Turk. She was too bubbly, too full of life. Yet when he'd been forced to hold her down so the medic could heal her damaged internal organs, to stop her from damaging them further, Legend had seen the contradictory evidence. You didn't get to look that way without a story the colour of pitch, and those scars hadn't come to her while she worked for Shinra. There were too many and they were too ... He would've known. Not even Shinra's arrogant bigwigs could have kept something like that quiet from the department that dealt specifically with secrets, lies and cover-ups.

And then there was what she'd cried out while only half-conscious. Legend had been shocked at the tears running down her cheeks and the sides of her head as she fought being pinned down. She'd struggled, but sedatives would have interfered with her 'natural rhythms', whatever they were, so the medic had been reluctant to use them.

"Mother!" she'd shrieked in such a panicky, grief-stricken voice that if he hadn't seen her talking, Legend would never have believed was hers. "Mother! _Mother!_"

"You forget everything you seen and heard here today," he'd ordered the medic when the guy left, using his best Deadly Turk Stare. Having only one eye came in handy when you wanted to look intimidating. People always wondered what you'd done to lose it, and their imaginations conjured better stories than he could make up, which was why he'd never told anyone the truth.

"I didn't do anything except heal a patient," the medic had said. "I'm not paid to do or remember more than that."

"Good."

Legend had watched over Naifu until she woke, wondering what to say when she did. There was something incredibly innocent about her when she was unconscious. He'd noticed it as she swung limply in his arms on the way back from the docks. Face smoothed by unconsciousness, she was the same as everybody else. She could've been any girl her age, even in the suit. Knowing she _wasn't_ somehow made her seem even more vulnerable. She was tough but frail, strong but fragile. The moment he caught her and felt the thinness of her limbs beneath the fabric, an unnerving desire to protect had risen inside him like a mountaintop emerging from a cloudbank. Not because she was the great love of his life or anything soppy like that, but just because her guard had dropped, and she hadn't dropped it of her own accord. She'd been forced into a helpless position, and he didn't want the rest of the world to see that when she'd obviously spent a lot of time and effort working to hide it.

_Damn it. Damn it all the hell and back. _

He was in on a secret. Trouble was, he didn't want to be. This secret sucked.

It especially sucked because Naifu acted differently around him afterwards. He thought he'd bought himself a reprieve when she'd got dressed and they went down to Rod and Kakutou. She had decided it would be a brilliant idea to slide down the banister. Then she had run out to puke over the wall into his expensive swimming pool.

"Sorry," she said sheepishly. "That first step is a doozy. By the way, swimming? A really bad idea for anyone until that thing is cleaned."

It was a false reprieve. As soon as they touched down in Midgar, he realised just how false.

Naifu was different. She wasn't so eccentric. She seemed almost guarded, at least around him, which wasn't often anymore. Not that he could blame her for being cautious after what he'd seen, but it still rankled. What did she think he was going to do, broadcast it from a rooftop? It was insulting. It was offensive. It was … disappointing.

That was it. The way she looked at him afterwards, with a flicker of fear and suspicion, was disappointing. He'd thought they were on the level. Her reactions said otherwise. She didn't trust him. Maybe it was stupid to expect trust from a Turk, but the disrespect alone was galling. After she'd kicked up such a stink about being treated respectfully, not like a kid in their ranks, she couldn't be bothered to show the same courtesy to someone else?

Disappointment turned to anger, as Naifu orchestrated ways to avoid him, and either didn't speak to him, or acted like he was the enemy when they were forced to spend time together.

Eventually he had to corner her and bring it all into the open before he choked on his anger. He was taller, broader, and more muscled than her. It was easy enough to block the doorway when he found her alone in the Turk rec room.

"I haven't said a goddamn word," he said as an opening. "Now will you stop treating me like I'm gonna?"

She stared at him. For a second he thought she might deny knowledge of what was going on. Then her expression slammed shut and she stared down into her box of unappetising Wutaian take-out. At least she wasn't going to insult him again by playing dumb.

"You want to ask questions."

"But have I actually asked 'em?"

She shook her head. "Doesn't matter. I can see it in your face every time you see me. You want to ask questions that I don't want to answer. I'm grateful for what you did on the Costa del Sol, but that mission changed … things."

"Changed what, exactly?"

"Stuff. Between you and me. It changed … stuff."

_Oh for the love of– _"Example?"

"You feel sorry for me."

"And you don't want pity." He rolled his one eye. "That's original."

The look she gave him was petulant. "Clichés get to be clichés for a reason, you know."

"Okay. So why, exactly, do _you_ not want to be pitied?"

Another loaded silence. She glanced at the door, but he'd kicked it shut. The privacy wasn't much, but it was enough to loosen her tongue. "Because when people pity you, it's because they see you as less than them. If they feel sorry for you, they're automatically putting themselves on some sort of moral high ground, where they think they have a right to treat you like you're weak."

"Oh, give me a break."

Her eyes narrowed. "You don't know what I'm talking about. Nobody ever pitied you."

"You know that for a fact, do you?"

She blinked at him. He'd caught her on the back foot with that one. He pressed his advantage.

"Enlighten me."

"I've been through too much to go backwards. I fought to get where I am today. I went through …" Her eyes flickered. "A lot."

"Define 'a lot'."

"Hell."

"That's not a definition, that's a synonym."

Now it was her turn to roll her eyes. "You want details? That'll just make you pity me more. Don't you get it, Legend? I want to be treated like everyone else. I earned that. I'm not giving it up now. Just like I earned the right not be treated like some worthless _kid_."

"That's a crock of shit. I've been treating you the same. You're the one who's acting different."

"What is this, one-upmanship?"

"This is me being sick and tired of you acting like a goddamn kid when I've shown you more consideration than you deserve."

She glared at him. He'd never seen her glare that way before. There was a hint of disgust in it. For some reason that bothered him, but he stood his ground.

"You think you got the right to demand respect as an adult when you act like a kid?" he asked.

"I haven't been a kid in a long time."

"You're sure as hell acting like one."

Her eyes flashed. He could practically hear her self-control straining. She'd telegraphed her Achilles' heel to him as a colleague, and he was using it against her now as a ... oh bugger.

"I've killed people."

He pulled back from defining the difference between colleagues, friends and the No Man's Land between. "Kids can kill people."

"You've seen for yourself that I'm –" She broke off. "I'm not a kid," she finished through gritted teeth. Talk about a broken record. And other broken things.

Legend waited a moment before saying, "So quit acting like one. And quit treating me like some schoolyard bully with something to hold over you. I don't have any reason to hurt you." He said it meaningfully. Bugger the consequences. He wanted things to get back to normal.

"Yeah, this week."

"Thanks. Nice to know you think so highly of me."

She looked away, embarrassed.

"Everybody's got a past, Sureshot. Everybody's got stuff they wanna keep hush-hush."

"I know that."

"I ain't your enemy. I ain't out to get you. I ain't trying to hurt you."

"You ain't good at grammar either." She tried to smile. It cut about as much ice as a hacksaw made of cottage cheese. "I know all that too." The words came out in a sigh.

Something about her deflated, folding in on itself and making her appear smaller. Suddenly she was just as vulnerable and defenceless as she'd been when she was bleeding in his arms on the Costa del Sol. The same desire to protect that had emerged then emerged within him now as well.

Legend shook it off. Or tried to.

"The suit's useful," Naifu said quietly. "Covers a lot. Nobody questions the suit. Nobody questions Turks who wear their suits."

He didn't say anything.

"I'm … sorry."

He waited. No answers came, but the apology was genuine. Naifu wasn't deceptive, she was just queen of omission.

"Okay," he said finally. Then he snatched the box of takeout from her hands and tossed it into the trash. "I thought I told you to stop eating this crap."

She blinked at him. Embers glowed back to life in her eyes. "So what am I _supposed_ to eat?"

It didn't escape him that food was turning into their way of finishing uncomfortable conversations. "Something actually edible?"

"Example? Because when you have your first break in hours, and you're short on time but big on hunger, options are limited. I don't have time for experimenting when I'm hungry."

He pulled her to her feet. "I know a place that makes the best shish-kebabs and does deliveries."

"Shish-kebabs? Those things that double as food and weapons?"

"Watch and learn, grasshopper."

….


	27. Zack: Puppy

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><p><strong>27. Zack – Puppy<strong>

* * *

><p>With all the insane things that had happened in his life, Zack still managed to be surprised by the quality and quantity of craziness and pain the world continued to throw his way. You couldn't make up stuff like this. Seriously. Put a hundred monkeys and a hundred typewriters in a room for a year and you'd still end up with something that made more sense than his life.<p>

It wasn't bad enough that he'd lost Angeal. It wasn't bad enough that his core beliefs had been shaken by watching his mentor's body decay, his mind fragment, and watching him question everything about himself – right up to whether he or not he was even _human_. Angeal had more human love and compassion in his big toe than over half the people in Shinra had in their whole bodies, but he'd considered himself a monster right up to the end, and the fact he hadn't been able to either save or soothe his mentor still ate away at Zack.

Save Angeal? Oh, if only. It wasn't bad enough that Zack hadn't been able to do that single thing – had, in fact, been forced to fight and kill one of the most precious people in the world to him. Neither was it bad enough that Genesis had also gone off the deep end, and was still running around unchecked somewhere, or that Zack himself been denied compassionate leave, shipped out to Junon for a fresh assignment only hours after hearing Angeal's death rattle, and damn near got his platoon killed when anti-Shinra militants jumped them while he was too dazed to notice the tail.

Nope, apparently none of that was bad enough. Fate had decided to stop messing around and bring out the big guns – madness, betrayal, mass murder, treachery and deceit, all condensed into a single evening that was only the _start_ of the really bad stuff. Just when Zack had thought things were settling to a more sane level of Shinra-endorsed craziness, his world tipped sideways again and everything went to shit in the biggest way possible.

He still couldn't believe Sephiroth had turned on them – turned on _him_. The clang of Buster Sword against Masamune was the knell in a nightmare only he witnessed, over and over and over. Even when he was strapped to a metal table, his pain threshold being tested to its limits by the inventiveness of sick minds, a part of him continued to feel like he'd missed a vital episode in the TV show of his life and was still trying to catch up with the plot.

His life had dissolved at the seams. Very few people knew what it was like to wake up each day and remind yourself that the world around you was real, not just whatever chemical cocktail they'd put in your intravenous today. He used to rely on touch to reassure himself that his eyes could be believed, but after they broke both his legs and put him in a recovery tube full of mako, and he became convinced the glass was sentient and trying to stab him, he couldn't even rely on that anymore. It was a struggle just to keep going instead if finally saying 'fuck it' and giving up. He'd be perfectly within his rights. No one person should have to go through what he had and be expected to take it.

The scientists in charge of his case liked to introduce mitigating factors to see what happened. Bunch of sadists. They'd push him to his physical limits, to where he was literally clinging to life by a thread, and then douse him with the mako that would help his SOLDIER-enhanced body recuperate. It was supposed to test the durability of a SOLDIER body, to see whether or not repeated exposures to mako dulled its effectiveness, he thought. It was the only explanation he could come up with that made sense, apart from the idea that these were all just sick bastards Shinra kept on payroll because they sometimes came up with a good idea and he was now the human equivalent of a stress ball. He was Shinra property, after all. He'd been told _that_ countless times. It was their _right_ to use him as a test subject.

_Yeah right._ Zack wasn't so far gone he didn't know _that_ was a pile of dragon dung.

Each time they took him out of the tube to test him, his captors would introduce a random element to see how his body reacted. An overdose of painkillers, denial of oxygen, complete sensory deprivation, a higher concentration of mako, or what they termed a 'Costa del Sol Cocktail', meaning a stasis tube of water with only the barest hint of mako in it 'for flavour', just like the weak cocktails served at the average Costa del Sol bar. Zack remembered all these and more, though with varying degrees of clarity.

What he did remember was Hojo's face outside his tube each time. The bastard had seemed to live at the facility in the beginning, but now only dropped in on the days when his 'specimens' were woken, extracted from their tubes, and put through the kind of twisted experimentation that made ritual torture look like a luxury spa treatment. When they were put back into the tubes and Hojo's team debriefed, he stayed to watch his 'specimens'. Many times Zack had summoned the last vestiges of his strength to give the guy the finger, but more often than not he was too exhausted to do more than try to focus on the sicko's smile – the one that might have been more effective if it hadn't completely missed his cold, dead eyes.

Zack didn't know how long he'd been here. He didn't even really know where 'here' was, since he'd been anaesthetised and just plain passed out more times than he could count. They'd started at Nibelheim, that much he was sure of, but now it could be anywhere. During his chemically-induced sleep, anything could have happened. He could have been moved to a different facility and never know it. He could have been unconscious for months and it would felt like barely a few minutes had passed. He didn't seem to age (something else attributable to the huge amounts of mako constantly repairing his body). There were no windows to tell from the changing seasons outside, no calendars hung on the walls, and nobody ever talked to them unless it was part of the tests.

Them. Not just him. Another thing he had to remind himself of, and more often than anything else. He'd never be able to forgive himself if he forgot Cloud.

Cloud, whose mind had already snapped under the strain of what had been done to them. Cloud, whose shock at Sephiroth's behaviour had eclipsed even Zack's, and which had gone a long way to reducing him to his current state. Cloud was by no means a weakling, but he had never undergone SOLDIER training. Zack had a resistance to mako exposure that Cloud didn't, and the strain it put on Cloud's body and mind each time he was dumped into it was intense. Zack remembered how, when he entered SOLDIER and was given his first mako injections, he had hallucinated so badly he'd had to be restrained so he didn't hurt himself. He'd lost touch with his conscious mind ten minutes after the jab on Monday and couldn't remember a thing until the following Friday. It had taken a long time for him to get used to the treatments enough that restraints weren't needed, and he still tended to lock himself away in his quarters the evening following a booster.

Cloud didn't have those experiences or that resistance. Eventually the combination of experiments and successive mako treatments had eroded his mind like a sandstone cliff, leaving him alive but unresponsive. One of Zack's worst but clearest memories since first waking, naked and trapped in green liquid with a breathing tube down his throat, was of chattering to Cloud in the next tube to keep him positive, only to realise that Cloud could no longer hear him.

Part of Zack was convinced he'd already lost his mind. The rest of him told that part to shut up. He no longer thought they'd be rescued, but he'd be damned if he'd die just to give those scientist bastards some interesting test results and the prospect of an autopsy – although they'd opened him and Cloud up so many times an autopsy probably wouldn't be necessary anymore. The scientists were confused when he just kept talking to Cloud, and that pleased Zack more than words could say. He talked incessantly, day and night, whether they were around or not. When the breathing tube was inserted his words were slurred, and sometimes the liquid around him stained red when he cut the inside of his throat, but he kept talking. When the liquid was emptied, before they were gassed into unconsciousness for Gaia-knew-how-long again, he cracked jokes and laughed as if Cloud had replied.

"Specimen C is a complete failure!" Hojo pronounced on one such occasion. The words carried clearly to Zack with no mako to muffle them. "Totally unreceptive to all stimulants. Barely enough brain activity to even qualify as a vegetative state. Worthless! Useless to the programme's ultimate objective. And you're telling me this is a simple case of mako poisoning?"

"Um, not _simple_, Professor -"

"Yo, Hojo!" Zack called. "Can't you figure it out? Cloud just got tired of looking at your ugly face and decided the inside of his own head was better."

Hojo fixed him with a blank stare before turning back to his team. "And Specimen Z _still_ retains an individualised identity at this late stage?"

"Um, yes Professor."

"What are you people _doing_? Are you _complete_ idiots, or do you just like baiting me with new variations of old failures?"

"W-We've tried all the inducers, but he rejects them and recovers back to a fully functioning, independently minded state each time. The other subjects responded well, but it's possible Z's previous experiences with mako are inhibiting responsiveness to the Reunion underpinnings each time we try to put them in place."

"Or perhaps you're just waiting to long to trying putting them in place," Hojo snapped. "Like you did with Specimen C. You let his psychological damage go on too long without introducing the directives forcefully enough. By the time you were giving him orders, he was too far gone to take them!"

Zack didn't understand their babble. What he did understand was that look from Hojo – the one that promised pain in the name of scientific discovery and catharsis.

"Perhaps I can rectify Specimen Z before your bumbling loses the programme another subject. It's all a matter of knowing which chink to focus on in order to shatter the boulder, after all."

"Professor?"

"Specimen Z is defined by the set of laws by which he governs himself and his actions."

"I-I don't -"

"His _honour_, you cretin. All this time and you still haven't figured it out? That archaic set of values and behaviours is what characterises Z. Break _that_ and you've broken _him_."

Sure enough, Zack was yanked from his tube, restrained, and put through his paces under the scalpel. When Hojo made the first few incisions Zack was so full of adrenaline he barely felt them, and managed to keep up his litany of abuse. With nothing to do except talk, he'd invented brilliant new cusses during his waking hours and saving the best especially for Hojo. He loosed them in volley after volley of yells that were more about anger than pain. He could feel his own skin being pulled back, but instead of bucking against the restraints he focussed entirely on telling Hojo _exactly_ how much of a bastard he was, and also his mother, his father, his extended family, his fleas, his head lice, his tapeworm, his toe-jam, his sycophantic associates, and every human being he'd ever had dealings with right back to childhood.

By the time Hojo had gone deep enough to strike bone, however, Zack's eyes were blurring with pain and he couldn't stop a violent shudder. His voice faltered. His vision began to fade as blood rolled down the sides of his chest in widening rivulets. He heard the disturbing crack of his own ribs, recognised the sound from previous occasions, and wondered if this time he really would choke to death on his own vomit. Hojo sawed and pulled and yanked at things that shouldn't have been sawed or pulled or yanked – not unless the owner was already dead. Zack kept himself from losing control, but something was screaming inside his head; a high, inhuman sound that had no beginning or end.

_Please, someone, make it stop_, he thought desperately. _Just make it stop. Angeal, help me …_

He'd never been especially religious, but now he was willing to believe in anything if some higher power would reach down and make this nightmare go away. As Hojo slipped his fingers inside and cradled organs that should never have known the touch of another person, Zack's eyes rolled back and he caught a glimpse of Cloud, floating insensate in mako. Cloud's gaze was on the table, but he couldn't see a thing of his friend's ordeal.

"One squeeze and I could end it all," Hojo was saying somewhere that sounded very far away. "The heart is a very delicate organ. I'm literally holding your life in the palm of my hand. I will, however, spare you if you beg for your life. Come along, Z. Or are your stubborn SOLDIER pride going to get in the way again? Honour. Pride. What nonsense. Don't you think it's time you abandoned those ridiculous notions when you have much more important things to concentrate on? They didn't save your mentor, did they? And they won't save you now, so what good are they?"

It was blatant power politics. Hojo just wanted Zack to acknowledge that he was helpless in this situation. Getting someone to admit they were powerless was the first step to breaking them to your will. It wasn't even complicated psychology; it was stuff you found in the playground; albeit with a warped element to keep things interesting.

Angeal's voice floated back to Zack through the years: "_Never let go of your dreams. Always keep your honour."_ He had promised Angeal. Nothing would ever make him betray that promise. A shot of hatred mainlined to the heart beating against Hojo's hand.

"Is … iiiisss …" Zack's mouth refused to work properly. It was worse than being drunk. As a SOLDIER, his high tolerance for alcohol meant getting truly plastered was nigh impossible, but as a kid in Gongaga he once got into his father's stash and ended up being sick in his mother's flowerbed. That same spinny, achy feeling suffused him now, as he concentrated hard on forming words. "Iz that … yuh … youuur …"

"Hm?"

He sucked air. Tried to ignore the sensation of his lungs pushing against a foreign object. Reached for the last of his strength and got everything out in a rush. "Is-that-your-face-or-did-your-neck-just-throw-up?"

Hojo's scowl was magnificent.

At least until he made good on his threat. It felt like a true coronary. Zack gasped and blacked out almost instantaneously, even his enhanced body coping the only way it could: by shutting down.

Zack almost wished he wouldn't reboot this time.

Almost.

He didn't know how long he was lost to the darkness, but eventually he surfaced and found himself drifting in his tube once more. His chest had been roughly slapped back together, like a careless kid building a model train, for the mako and his own enhanced healing to fix. His ribs felt like loose milk-teeth, the left half of his jaw hurt where it had caved inwards at some point, and both sides of his collarbone had been snapped. From the bottom of his clavicle to his navel was an open wound, discolouring the mako a horrible dark brown as red mixed with green around him.

He faded in and out for a while. The world was always reduced to flashes while he was recovering: Cloud in the next tube, some scientist or other looking up, bubbles from around his own breathing mask, strip-lighting in a corridor ceiling whipping by as he was gurneyed somewhere.

This time, however, the flashes were fewer, and when he came to properly Zack knew he hadn't been allowed the same amount of time to recover as usual. His chest wasn't an open wound anymore, but it hadn't fully healed either, and talking was a bitch with a busted jaw. He was strapped down again, this time to a chair with electrodes stuck all over his body and a curious metal helmet over the back of his skull.

_Oh fuck …_

Electrocution was bad even for someone brimming with mako. They asked questions in between doses, sometimes gave orders or told him things in that forceful way teachers sometimes did when they expected you to remember stuff just because they'd said it – the way Angeal never had. The voices all blended together after a while. If the volts were supposed to cement what they were saying in his mind, then boy, had they made a mistake.

By the time they put him back this time he could barely breathe and every nerve ending in his body felt like it had been held in an open flame. Before he could sink into blissful unconsciousness, however, there was a prick in his arm and the world snapped into the frenetic focus usually attributed to twenty cups of coffee and a bag of sugar.

"What is your name?"

What the hell kind of question was that? "Bwuh…?"

"Who are you?"

"Mrrf …"

A flicker of excitement in the tone. "Are you one known as Specimen Z?"

"No … M' Zuh … Zaaack … Faaaaii-"

He heard a slap and realised with some surprise it had been delivered to someone else, and not by him.

"Idiot. It didn't work. He's still retaining his own identity!"

"Sorry, Professor, I was sure that with all the trauma to the brain, the suggestions, and the distress of the pre-existing injuries -"

"Idiot!" Another slap, but Zack couldn't take any pleasure in it. He bet it wasn't even a fraction of his own pain right now.

He faded out, still muttering his name and repeating it in his head, since it seemed to piss Hojo off so much. _Zack Fair. I'm Zack Fair. Zacky-boy. Zack Attack! Zack the Man. Zackamundo. Zack Fair, First Class …_

_Puppy_.

Just because Zack was a man now, and the time had passed when Angeal would come to rescue his pupil from whatever latest scrape he'd gotten himself into, didn't mean Zack had stopped longing for it to happen.


	28. Rod: Target

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><p><strong>28. Rod – Target<strong>

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><p>"Hey, Sureshot."<p>

Naifu waved. "Cheers, Big Ears."

Legend shook his head. "That's the worst one yet."

She stuck out her tongue.

After so long of walking on eggshells around each other, it seemed they're patched up their differences. Rod couldn't decide whether that bothered or pleased him. Legend was still an arrogant asshole with the power to irritate to face-mashing level at a hundred paces, but Naifu had been so weird after they returned from the Costa del Sol, Rod couldn't bring himself to wish away her improved mood. A lot of people sleepwalked through life, but not Naifu. She inhabited every moment and made them interesting, at least. Sometimes they were even … fun.

Rod wondered when having fun had become a luxury he could no longer afford. Was it when he became a Turk? Earlier than that? Had there ever really been a time he _did_ have fun?

Yes. A long time ago. He'd just given up remembering those times because they threw into sharp relief the way things were for him now– especially in light of Alejandro's threats.

Not that anything had ever come of those. Rod still looked over his shoulder, but now when he went out a few grains of foolishness had worked their way into the action. The more time passed, the more he dismissed Alejandro as a bitter but ineffective enemy. Hadn't Alejandro already proved that with how he'd handled the gang? Rod shouldn't have taken him so seriously. Alejandro was weak, and there were bigger fish to fry.

The line-up of active Turks was dwindling, and uptake wasn't replacing their numbers as they needed. At this rate 'elite' might as well be synonymous with 'endangered'. Tseng had his work cut out keep the department's head above water. Heidegger was eager to take political pot-shots, and their status had been impaired by Veld, AVALANCHE and other recent problems. To prevent the Turks from become a scapegoat for Shinra's bad mood after Sephiroth, maintaining the Turks' reputation was up to the ground troops. Without some bigwig support, their future looked like it might get pretty rocky, but they'd have to ride out whatever happened.

Just what they needed; to be fighting for Shinra itself to take them seriously when they had other things –better things – to be thinking about. What they needed was someone in the hierarchy to invest support in them – not necessarily financial, but just to wedge their status behind the Turks' to shore them up a little. In the event of that not happening, however, it was time to get down to brass tacks and just do the job; let the results speak for themselves.

So when a VIP's son was found shacked up in a Midgar slum with a Lucid needle in his arm, Tseng lost no time in dispatching Rod and Naifu. They were to ensure the silence of any witnesses while he courted the distraught father. Make a bigwig grateful enough and he'd be climbing all over himself to support them: public support for a very private service. At least, that was what Tseng was hoping, and the plan did require Rod and Naifu making it to the son before any reporters or political enemies of his father found him first.

"I'm trying to come up with a new name for him," Naifu said, dragging Rod back to reality. "The Legendary Turk? Puh-lease. Talk about blowing your own trumpet. But he won't tell me his real name, which must mean it's something really embarrassing, like Susan or Polly."

"Those are girl names."

"Exactly. Or maybe he has one of those virtue names – Valour or Courage." She grinned evilly. "Or Thurgood."

"That's a virtue name?"

"Yup. So is Prudencio. It's the male form of Prudence. I had this conversation with Cissnei once, when we discussed the worst names to have. It's weird, isn't it, how touchy people can get about their names? Nobody ever seems to like their own."

Rod grunted.

"Your name's pretty well suited to you – short, sharp, easy to yell in a fight when someone's about to cave in your head with a crowbar, plus it's your weapon of choice as well. How convenient is that? Of course, I know it's just a shortened version of your real name, but all the same, it's very fitting."

"You're babbling."

"I always babble. It's one of my many charms."

Rod shook his head, but a kernel of warmth remained. Was that … affection? Damn it, he really was getting soft. "C'mon," he rumbled. "Time to go to work."

"As long as you don't go all Knight Errant on me again."

"What?"

"I'm a big girl, Rod," she sighed. "I don't need you to look out for me while we're on duty. You've been breathing down my neck since we got back from Costa del Sol." She eyeballed him. "I'm touched. Really. It proves you actually have a heart. But seriously? Stop it. It's stifling. I don't need a big strong man to take care of me, in case you hadn't noticed. You're making out like I'm one of those oppressed females in romance novels who swoon and use smelling salts."

Rod stared at her. "Since when do you read romance novels?"

She shrugged. "But you get my point, right?"

He did, but he couldn't help it. He wanted to protect her. It was more than a little instinctive. Nevertheless, he nodded.

She brightened, if it was possible for her sunny disposition to get any brighter. "Good. Now let's offski! I don't want to spend too long out there today. The brothels where they allow Lucid always give me the creeps."

Rod couldn't disagree. There was always an extra element of sleaziness when the clientele and the girls (or boys) who tended them were equally out of their heads. They needed to move this bigwig's son someplace less inflammatory before –

He didn't register the shot until pain exploded in his shoulder. He didn't register much of anything, except the instinct that had him ducking and rolling as screams erupted throughout the monorail platform. All around them people panicked and ran. Funny how groups of humans acted like herds of dumb animals when they panicked: make a loud enough noise and watch them scatter.

"Rod!"

"I'm okay."

"No, I mean over there!" Naifu gestured.

Rod turned to see the escaping figure topple off the roof of the carriage with a knife between his shoulder-blades. The figure got to his feet, staggered and fell sideways. He hit the ground and didn't get up again. He was quickly obscured by panicked commuters.

Rod pushed to his feet. Naifu followed. They descended on the fallen shooter before he could be trampled. People backed off at the sight of two Turks, forming a clearing around them like water running around a giant rock in the middle of a river. Threats were posed by every passing body, so Naifu provided cover as Rod turned the guy over. As well as the knife wound, they hadn't completely prevented him being trampled. The result wasn't pretty. A large bloody bubble popped across his face, but the red spatter wasn't enough to disguise his identity.

Rod stared in mounting horror. "Carlito?"

The guy wasn't very old, more boy than man, but he glared up at Rod with long-standing bitterness. He tried to speak, but the light in his eyes was already dimming.

"Shit," Rod said desperately. "_Shit_!"

"You … did it," the kid burbled. "You … ruined him. What they been doin' to him. S'all … your … fault."

"Carlito, hang on!"

"Your fault. Left us ... him ... because of you, he went ... tried to … 'cause of ... of youuu..." Carlito's eyes fluttered shut and his chest deflated.

"Shit!" Rod grabbed his shoulder but knew in an instant it was no use – and a bad idea. Not that he had grabbed with his newly busted arm, but he had used Carlito's name. Recognition had shown in his face and voice. Naifu must have noticed.

She confirmed his mistake. "You know this punk?"

Rod cursed inwardly. "Once upon a time."

"He was aiming for you. A crappy shot, but you were definitely his target." She looked at the crowd, which was changing from 'panicking' to 'milling in confusion'. Turks standing over a dead body should have disturbed them, but after the sound of gunfire it actually quieted their alarm. Shinra had saved them. The threat had been neutralised. Maybe they could make it to work alive and on time after all. A boy was dead and they were glad because it meant less interruption of their workday.

_Midgar, you just keep finding new ways to suck ass_. Rod gritted his teeth so hard they hurt. "We need to take care of this."

"And you." Naifu indicated his bleeding shoulder. "You need triage, buddy." She lowered her voice. "And something tells me there's a story behind this that I, as your partner, should hear." Her expression was playful but there was steel in her voice.

Rod considered. That shot could easily have taken her down as well. Maybe she did have a right to know about his personal shit. She could know some of it, at least.

"All right, but first we do our job."

Naifu kept her blades out, clenched between her fingers for easier access. "Don't we always?"

* * *

><p><em>To Be Continued ...<em>

* * *

><p>.<p> 


	29. Naifu: Secret Keeper

**A/N: **Points to anyone who can spot the side-fling to _The Replacement Killers_. I do love me some Mira Sorvino/Chow Yun Fat action flicks. ^_^

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><p><strong>29. Naifu: Secret-Keeper<strong>

* * *

><p>"There's a <em>contract <em>out on you?"

"Nothing so formal."

"Screw _formal_! And you didn't think to _mention _this before?" Naifu's voice hit a note to shatter glass. She made a conscious effort to bring it back into the range of human hearing.

"I realise this puts you in a difficult position –"

"Screw _me_!" She blinked. "Um, wait, scratch that. Imagine I rephrased it into something cooler and less suggestive." She waved as if trying to dispel second-hand cigarette smoke. "_You're_ the one in the difficult position. You … you …" Her fists were balled. When did that happen? "You _numbskull_!"

"Oh … kay. Numbskull?"

"Granted, that's not my best insult, but you _are _a numbskull. So you're telling me not even _Tseng_ knows about this?"

"Who knows what Tseng knows?"

"Good point. But he hasn't exactly given you a bodyguard, so I'm guessing he doesn't know. By the way, that's a good point, actually. Who guards the bodyguards? The same people who watch the watchers? Or mind the minders?"

Rod patted the bandages under his shirt. His injury hadn't merited a full healing, just a cursory one from a harassed doctor at a downtown Midgar medical centre. Neither he nor Naifu were stupid enough to think the news of them being there wouldn't get back to Shinra, but it wasn't as blatant as going back to base and showing his wound to a Shinra medic. Rod had painkillers and the promise of a working limb. Since Carlito hadn't hit his dominant arm, it would have to be enough for now. They still had a job to do. Speaking of which …

"So what now?" Naifu demanded.

"Now? Now we find that rich kid and get him out of that brothel."

"That's not what I meant and you know it."

"I … I don't know." For once, the unflappable Rod looked pretty darnn flapped. And frustrated. And worried. And … scared?

Naifu did a double take. She didn't think she'd ever seen him worried before. Not genuinely; like something was eating him up inside and his own pig-headed male ego was letting it turn his insides to sludge in silence.

"You didn't get hit with a rubber bullet today."

"I know that."

"That Carlito kid was trying to –"

"I _know_ that!"

"Who was he?" she asked softly.

"I already told you –"

"Not like that. Who was he to you?"

He paused for a long moment, processing her words. "His folks were addicts. Both of them. They died when he was a little kid. He ended up living on the streets with a pack of stray dogs for a while before I found him. Just a few months, but he'd already stopped talking, and he … growled at anyone who came near."

Naifu waited. "Except you," she said at last.

"No, he growled at me too; but he ate the food I gave him and he followed me home. Eventually he told me his name and his story." He was sitting with his hands on his thighs. They scrunched into fists at the memories. He looked like he wanted to pound something – or someone. Maybe Carlito. Maybe this Alejandro character. Maybe himself.

Naifu wouldn't have been surprised at the last one. Rod was super-competitive and judged himself harshly in whatever he did. His competitiveness was what had motivated him to join Shinra. It was what had also made him betray Carlito and all the other kids he had taken care of while pretending to be such a hard-ass street punk. He had thrown all that away to try being the best Turk instead.

"Numbskull," she muttered.

Rod wouldn't meet her gaze. He was scowling. He always scowled, like he was mad at the world even when he was enjoying himself. Naifu had the disorienting sense of seeing someone who was the same as ever and yet suddenly very different. It was like in the Costa del Sol, when she first saw him after she woke up. Was he _grieving_ right now?

She had to squash the empathy that wanted to take over her thoughts. Now was not the time to get all schmoopy. Rod was still Rod, even if one of his strays had died in his arms.

"We still got a mission we have to complete," Rod said.

"Is that you saying you don't want to tell Tseng what you just told me?"

He still refused to meet her gaze.

"What makes you think I won't tell him?"

"Because if you do, every member of the Rage Riders may be dead by morning."

Naifu's jaw clicked shut. She couldn't deny it. The safest, cleanest and most effective way of dealing with a threat to one of their own was to eradicate it in one strike. It was the Turk way. Yet these people – these _kids_ – were … well, people. They weren't just hits. They had names and faces, and Rod knew every one of them. He may have selfishly walked out on his gang, but that didn't mean he had stopped caring – however much he tried to convince himself otherwise. He had told himself he wasn't responsible for them anymore and their fates were none of his concern. That was a lie, but one he found hard to get past. Naifu could see it on his face, leaking through hairline cracks in his expression like trickles of magma down the side of a volcano. She wondered what would happen when the realisation finally erupted.

"You have to deal with this, Rod. You can't just ostrich it away."

"Ostrich?"

"You know; bury your head in the sand and hope everything goes away on its own. Talk about immature."

Abruptly he stood. He buttoned his jacket, straightened his hair and squared his jaw. In five seconds he went from human being to Turk, all messy emotions gone from his face like dirt wiped off a smooth metal surface with a damp cloth. Except for the tightness at the sides of his mouth and the unease still lurking in his eyes, you'd never know he was anything but a consummate professional.

_Scary_, Naifu thought. Scary how easy it was to lose yourself to this job.

She stared at her own palm, sheathed in its fingerless glove. Her hand tightened into a fist again. They all had their own crosses to bear. Rod had shared his with her, but she hadn't done the same in return. Legend knew more about her past than her own partner, and even that had been an accident. Rod trusted her enough to let her behind his defences. She couldn't – wouldn't – betray that trust by passing on what she knew when he didn't want her to.

"It's your decision," she said. "I've got your back. Just don't expect me to keep quiet forever. This is a threat to your life, Rod, and somehow, since becoming your partner, I developed a problem with watching you die."

Rod didn't say anything for a long moment. "Thanks," he mumbled. Then he headed for the door.

Naifu followed, wondering why a shiver crept up her spine when the room wasn't even cold.


	30. Eber: Scouted

A/N: Research (and watching the OVA with odd-but-I-can-forgive-them-because-they-re-trying Malaysian-person-writing-English subtitles) tells me these really are the names of Denzel's parents. His surname, however, is entirely my fault.

* * *

><p><strong>30. Eber: Scouted<strong>

* * *

><p>Eber patted his son on the head and ruffled his hair. Denzel grabbed his hand to stop him, but couldn't stop his father smiling.<p>

"Stop it!" One of Denzel's legs twitched. Eber knew he was desperate to stamp his foot, but held himself back. Throwing a tantrum was the worst thing he could do to help his case right now and he knew it. "Stop laughing at me!"

"I'm not laughing at you."

"Yes, you are. You're laughing at me!"

"I'm laughing because I have the most precocious son on our block."

Denzel screwed up his face, trying to work out if he'd just been insulted.

"Provocative, too. Maybe even avant-garde." Chuckles gathered in Eber's throat, tickling the back of his tongue. "But definitely precocious."

"You _are_ laughing at me."

Chloe came in, drying her hands on a towel. She had rolled her sleeves above her elbows and a splodge of washing up froth plastered her fringe to her forehead. She had obviously heard her husband and son talking and come through to play peacemaker. "Eber," she said warningly when she saw Denzel's expression.

Eber raised his hands. "I was paying him a compliment."

"In words he can understand?" Chloe knew him far too well.

Denzel turned flashing eyes on his mother. "Don't talk about me like I'm not here!"

She blanched at his tone.

Denzel was many things, but mean wasn't one of them. He was instantly repentant "Sorry, Mom."

"What's going on?" she asked gently.

"Ask _him_."

She looked at Eber, raising her eyebrows. He shook his head and shrugged in a way that was clearly meant to say 'it's not my fault'.

"He promised he'd take me to work with him today." Denzel glared. "He _promised_."

"Something came up."

Chloe's eyebrows rose further.

"Honestly."

They were practically in her hairline.

Eber sighed. It was true; he _had_ promised Denzel he would bring him to Shinra Tower for the imaginatively named school project 'Go to Work With Your Parents Day'. It was all the boy had talked about for days. Now their plan was stymied by an unexpected summons from Eber's bosses. He had to attend some sort of hush-hush private consultation, and you didn't have to be a mind-reader to know what his dour-faced supervisor would say if Eber even suggested bringing his son along. He had explained all this to Denzel, but the boy had only heard the part where his father broke his promise.

Chloe listened carefully. Then she turned to Denzel. "How about you come to work with me instead?"

"You don't go to work," Denzel said petulantly.

"Actually, I do. I work from home."

He made a face. "Selling _make-up_." He said it like the word itself might infect him with girl cooties.

Eber suppressed the urge to laugh again. He loved his son. Denzel was open, kind, honest, and intelligent for his age. He was also totally ignorant of the non-sequiturs he came out with. If he was a little bit wussy, Eber didn't care. He wasn't one of those fathers who trained their boys to swagger and beat up smaller kids. He didn't care whether Denzel could spit the length of a truck, or whether he came top of gym class. Eber himself had always been the victim in school, and had learned speed and guile were better weapons against bullies than being able to bench-press a bag of cement. As an adult he had kept the wiry frame and what his colleagues called 'rat bastard cunning', using it to outsmart his supervisor and make his soul-destroying job as a paper-pusher more tolerable. His love of long words was just one of many ways he wrung a kick out of otherwise tedious days.

Chloe stood up and put her hands on her hips. "Right, young man, I think it's time you got an up-close view of what your mother does for a living. She's quite a good saleswoman, she'll have you know, and selling make-up is a lot more difficult than anyone seems to realise. Your mother is going to teach you proper sales techniques for you to write about in your project."

"She's also going to spend the rest of the day talking in third person?" Eber suggested. Her towel hit him in the face.

She squealed when he swept her into his arms. Regardless of Denzel's revolted look, Eber kissed his wife and twirled her in a circle. Her feet caught the standing lamp, which would have gone crashing to the ground if not for Denzel's quick-thinking.

"Well done!" Eber praised.

Denzel replaced it resentfully, giving a hint of the moody silences they'd be in for when he hit puberty. For now, he just looked like a surly little boy who had been denied his treat and offered an unsatisfactory alternative. He had been looking forward to seeing the inside of Shinra Tower, even if it meant mostly seeing the inside of the giant office in which his father did mindless filing, photocopying and note-taking like a good little monkey.

Eber sighed, put Chloe down and knelt next to his son. He placed a hand on Denzel's shoulder, hoping he gave off the appropriate approachable vibe without come off as too condescending. He knew Denzel hated it when people talked down to him, or made out he was weak. He was small for his age and had a fine-boned face that sometimes got him mistaken for a girl. In an effort to stop that, he had insisted his mother let him get his hair cut, but now it was growing out again into soft waves that brushed his ears. All of this meant he was extra sensitive to disrespect from adults and other kids.

"Look, Denzel, how about the next time this day comes around I tell my boss where to stick his emergency meetings?"

Denzel looked away. "You won't." There was a catch to his voice. That little catch bespoke all the hurt and disappointment that he wouldn't let show. It just about broke Eber's heart.

"I will. Then we'll we go running through the whole of Shinra Tower toilet-papering everything. We'll leave whoopee cushions on the chairs of all the executives and put sugar in my boss's gas tank. How does that sound?"

"Like you're trying to sugar the pill."

Eber blinked. Then he did laugh, but it was a bemused whoosh of a laugh. How had he ended up with such a great kid? "Smart-aleck."

Denzel's mouth quirked, just a little.

"Aha! I see a smile."

"No you don't."

"I do." Eber corkscrewed his index finger in the centre of his son's chest. Denzel squirmed and giggled despite himself. "Told you so. There it is again."

"Dad, quit it! That tickles!"

Eber grinned. "I _am_ sorry, Denzel," he said seriously.

"I know. And I know you can't help what happened." Denzel's eyes were still full of disappointment, but he finally dropped his angry, offended tone. "Some things just aren't mean to be."

He went upstairs, ostensibly to do maths homework, but more likely to read superhero comics behind his textbook. Denzel had a deep and abiding love of heroes in general, envisioning himself in capes, cowboy hats and rocket boots depending on which genre he was reading. Usually there was a damsel in distress for him to rescue, then leave in a remote location before she could dispense yucky thank-you kisses. It was hard to be a superhero when you still believed in cooties.

Eber watched him go. "We've got one special kid there."

"You won't hear me disagreeing." Chloe drew closer for another kiss.

Without their son's disapproval to ruin the mood, this one lasted longer. Eber eventually broke away and rested his chin on top of her head. Chloe made it whole three seconds before she fidgeted. She always did, claiming he had 'the pointiest chin in all creation', which meant he felt obliged to balance it on her head more often.

"Are you worried about this meeting?" she asked.

He thought about it. "I haven't done anything to get me reprimanded recently."

"Not even talked back to your superiors?"

"Superior in name only."

"Modesty is just a word in the dictionary to you, isn't it?"

He chuckled and hugged her closer. "Can I help it if my supervisor is living proof of why cousins shouldn't marry?"

Chloe buried her face in his shirtfront. "Just promise me you won't say anything too rebellious in front of your boss's boss."

"I'll try."

"Eber …"

"Okay, okay, I promise."

But it wasn't his boss's boss whom Eber saw when he walked into the meeting the nest day. It wasn't anyone he could've imagined.

"Harrumph," said his supervisor, gesturing to the man in the chair on the other side of his desk. The man had an air of quiet authority, like he didn't have to throw his weight around or wear a name badge that read 'SUPERVISOR' in big letters to feel important. It was the vibe that always made self-important people stick out their chests like cats puffing up their fur to make themselves look bigger. "Ah, Washington. On time for once, I see. Will wonders never cease?"

"I don't know, sir."

His supervisor glared. If Eber weren't so good at his job this man would have canned him long ago. "Well sit down, sit down, and let's get started."

"Sir?"

"Don't dawdle, Washington!"

"Might I ask what this meeting is about, sir?"

"Job progression."

"Sir?"

"Recruitment. Staffing. Alternative employment within the company."

"I haven't applied for any other job, sir."

"You," his supervisor gritted with barely concealed resentment, "have been headhunted."

"I have?" Eber's astonishment wasn't faked. He was a strictly under-the-radar guy. If he did stand out it was because he had made some inappropriate comment or sloped off for an early lunch and been caught.

"Lateral move, based solely on high staff turnover in other departments, but frankly I'll be glad to get you out from under my feet." His supervisor glowered at the quiet man, ignoring Eber even though ostensibly talking to him. "Here he is. Eber Washington, just as requested. You're welcome to him."

The man smiled in a way that made Eber wary. The last time he'd seen a smile like that had been on a piranha in his son's science textbook. "Good morning, Mr. Washington. My name is Tseng."


	31. Naifu: Minder

….

**31. Naifu – Minder**

….

Thoughts rattled through Naifu's brain like loose change. She marched ahead of her partner for the day, distracted until he called for her wait. His voice rocketed her back into the present moment. She stood, abashed, while he caught up.

"You have somewhere urgent to be?" he wheezed.

"Not really, but it sounds like you have an urgent appointment at the gym for stamina training."

"Don't remind me. Ugh." He pulled a face. He was a new recruit from another department whom Tseng had brought across to pad out their ranks. Technically he was still on probation. There weren't enough Turks for a single person to take on his training, so he was being passed around to observe and learn what it took to be a Turk. "I always thought administration was about paperwork. I'm good at paperwork. I can sit and do paperwork for hours. And the added bonus is that paperwork doesn't try to shoot you."

"Hours? Really? I heard you always finished in five minutes and spent the rest of your time firing paperclips off rubber bands at the back of your supervisor's head."

He looked guilty, though a hint of pride glinted underneath, like gold fragments in a pan of mud. "Not all the time. Sometimes I frisbeed CD-ROMs or made origami birds. Once I spent an entire afternoon drawing on a spare set of floor plans, redesigning Shinra Tower so there weren't so many hare-brained fire hazards littering the place. Then I turned that into an origami bird. I mean, who was really going to listen to a cubicle monkey like me on a fire marshal matter? Especially since I was supposed to be doing tax returns at the time. That bird really flew, especially when a gust of wind from the open window got hold of it. Went out the window to freedom and everything."

"That birdie was you?" Naifu was impressed. She had seen it on Tseng's desk and made out enough words to wonder why he was keeping paper wildlife where nothing but coffee usually trod. It must have come to him after its bid for freedom from Eber's office.

Eber's mouth down-turned as he considered his own words. "It's a wonder I kept my job as long as I did, actually. I'm truly at a loss why your boss picked my name for his recruitment initiative."

"Tseng has method to his madness; he just doesn't always share it with the rest of us. Something in you simply screamed 'Turk' at him when he looked at your file." _Or your origami bird. _Naifu resisted the urge to tap her foot. "Are you done collapsing your lung now? Time's wasting."

"Where are we going?"

"To see Don Corneo."

Briefly, she explained the situation between Shinra and Corneo. Eber nodded in all the right places, using the opportunity to regain his breath. Soon they were off again. Naifu tried to keep pace with him, but as her thoughts skittered away, so did her feet. She pulled ahead without realising.

It felt weird, being out in the field without Rod. She hadn't realised how much she'd miss the big idiot until he wasn't there. Eber was a good guy, but she didn't get the same sense of reassurance with him at her back.

Despite what she'd said, she wondered whether this time Tseng had messed up. Had replenishing their ranks overtaken good sense when he decided on this new Turk? Eber had no talents that she could see. He was charming and clever, but so were politicians, and she trusted them as far as she could sneeze them. Rod was no politician, nor would he ever stoop to making paper birds to cure boredom. Eber and he were as different as chalk and cheese, and while she wasn't yet ready to write Eber off, right now all Naifu wanted was to be with Rod so she could play bodyguard some more.

She was worried about Alejandro and the Rage Riders. Rod refused to talk about it, but she knew the incident with Carlito had stayed with him. Turks weren't supposed to cling or linger over any death. Rod was a good Turk; nearly the best. He was probably beating himself up threefold: once for welching on his old crew, once for caring that deaths had occurred because of their vendetta, and once more for caring that he cared.

_Idiot_, she thought, and then wondered where she came on the scale of idiocy for feeling guilty that she couldn't take his guilt away.

….


	32. Naifu: Damaged

.

* * *

><p><strong>32. Naifu – Damaged <strong>

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><p>Naifu bid goodbye to Eber at the end of their shift. She reflected that things hadn't gone as hideously as they could have with Don Corneo, but the knowledge wasn't the least bit comforting. Instead, she felt antsy, like bugs were crawling around inside her skin. She toed the floor, not wanting to go back to her empty apartment. Some days were better than others when you lived alone, but there was always an empty feeling when you got home and the place was exactly as you'd left it when you went out.<p>

Someone spoke up behind her. "You look like you could do with kicking the crap outta something."

"Are you volunteering, mind-reader?"

Legend stepped around to stand in front of her. "Sure."

Naifu cocked her head to one side appraisingly. "Methinks you jest."

"Youthinks wrong," Legend replied. He rolled his neck. "Rough day. I'm getting kinks. I need to limber up with a good workout or I'll seize up completely."

"Old man."

"Young enough to kick your ass."

Naifu didn't argue with this. Any amount of time in this job incurred injuries, and old injuries had a habit of making more problems if you didn't keep yourself in shape. She wondered where Legend's injuries had come from.

He took one hand out of his pocket to shove his glasses back up his nose.

"Why are you wearing shades over an eyepatch?"

"Duh. To make me look cooler."

"You look like an idiot."

He shrugged, as if it didn't matter to him in the slightest what she thought of his fashion sense. "Are you okay for a few rounds in the gym?"

She shrugged, feigning indifference. "Whatever. Might be fun to kick your ass."

"Don't get presumptuous, Sureshot."

"'Presumptuous'? Ooh, look at you, using a big word like the clever dicks in the science department."

"Compare me to those bozos again and you'll regret it."

"I'm quaking in my standard issue black shoes. Seriously."

She changed quickly and joined him in the ring of crash mats. Nobody else was in the gym at this time of night, so they had the place to themselves unless other night owls decided to burn off some energy pounding the shit out of the equipment. Shinra gyms weren't for dieters trying to use up calories, or bodybuilders testing how much they could bench-press. If you were eligible to be in here, you were one dangerous person, and you were there to make yourself even more dangerous or work out your frustrations.

She and Legend started slow, exchanging a few warm-up punches and circling each other while still trading banter. Naifu wasn't great at hand-to-hand, but neither was he. They were both more comfortable with long-distance weapons, but they could hold their own in a close-up-and-dirty fight. Neither would last five minutes against Youhei or Kakatou, but compared to non-Shinra martial artists they were pretty good. At the very least they could hobble away with their dignity intact, if not their asses.

"... so then Don Corneo gave one of his patented shit-eating grins and I just _knew_ he was – unf! – gonna try and pinch my butt on the way out."

"And you – oof! – dealt with that how?"

"The best defence is a good offence."

"You didn't – whoof!"

"Relax. He still has all ten piggy fingers and all ten piggy toes."

"And both piggy balls?"

"That sounded so wrong."

"It sounded better in my head – yow!"

"Big baby. I barely touched you."

Legend swung. Naifu ducked and socked a foot into his groin. Nobody could ever accuse her of not playing for keeps. He caught the strike on the outside of his thigh and his fist pistoned out. She sidestepped, kicking his feet out from under him. He hit the floor hard. Things were getting more serious now.

"No fair aiming for the family jewels!" he yelped.

Naifu shrugged. "All's fair."

"That's only in love and war, Sureshot." He gave her a funny look. Then he surprised her with a super-fast sweeping kick.

Naifu's tailbone met the floor. "Yowch!"

"Big baby," Legend grinned. "I barely touched you."

Naifu braced her hands, rocked back and flipped to her feet. He did likewise. They looked like something from an acrobatic circus. Four feet hit the floor at the same moment and four fists went into guard position.

"Have you had enough pain yet, or are you thirsty for more?" Naifu asked.

"You say the sweetest things."

"You bring out my poetic side." She kicked up. Legend instinctively closed his legs, managing the complicated trick of also dancing backwards, but she wasn't aiming there a second time. When it worked, it worked, but if that move was as reliable as it looked in the movies, no man would ever get the best of a woman in a fight. Instead, she swapped legs and vaulted into a somersault, coming in fast with a volley of flying kicks at his head.

"So – unf! – is Rod – hrrk! - stuck on some boring shitty detail while you're – oof! – babysitting the new guy?"

"Paperwork!"

"Sucks! To! Be! Him!"

Maybe. Naifu was actually pretty glad Rod was stuck in Shinra Tower for the time being. _Not_ being on the streets was a Very Good Thing while he had people out for his blood. Well, out for it more than usual, and for more than just because he worked for Shinra and wore a Turk suit.

Her momentary distraction was all the opening Legend needed. He blocked and twisted, turning into the curve of her next kick and deflecting it along his side, so that she ended up almost slinging her leg around him like a tango dancer. A jab to her shoulder set her off-balance. He followed with a palm-strike that had her pirouetting to the ground. Naifu tried to roll into a shoulder-stand again, but Legend was there to stop her. He jammed his hands down on her shoulders, knees either side of her waist, pinning her down.

"Say uncle," he grinned.

Naifu tried to work her hips to boot the back of his head, but he shifted his weight backwards so she couldn't bend properly. She tensed her waist and abdominal muscles, but it was no use: she had been checkmated.

"Say uncle," Legend said again.

"You wish. I'm not done yet."

"You are from where I'm standing."

"You're not standing, and I still have to the count of five before I'm out."

"One, two, three, four –"

She ratcheted her neck forward to head-butt him. Legend fell back, clutching his nose. She realised belatedly how close his face had been to hers. Snapping upright into a sitting position, she chopped the sides of both hands down on either side of his neck. Legend folded like a cheap suit and she twisted him around, thumping his back against the floor. Suddenly their positions were reversed and she was on top of him, pinning him to the ground instead.

"Say … uncle," she panted.

He stared up at her, blinking his own good eye in surprise. "Should've seen that coming."

"Should've, would've, could've, didn't. Declare me the victor so I can go shower already. Your kinks are plenty worked out by now and I want to leave on a high –" She was cut off by him raising his head off the ground and covering her mouth with his.

Too late she realised why an experienced pro like him had been caught by a basic head-butt. She couldn't _believe_ was he was doing. It froze her into inaction. For about two seconds. When she could move again, she _did_. She released his shoulder and her fist shot out.

"Owwwwww! _Fuck_!"

She jumped off him and backed away. "What. Do. You. Think. You're. _Doing_?"

Legend clasped both hands over his face. His voice came out muffled and wet, as if he had a cold. "Shit, Sureshot, I think you really did bust my nose that time!"

"I should bust your freaking _head_."

"What?"

"Don't you _ever_ do that again. _Ever_!"

He peered up at her from the floor, hands shifting below his nose to catch the blood before it ran down the sides of his face. "Wasn't that big a deal," he slurred, indistinct but understandable enough for her to hear the sullenness in his voice, like a kid who had been promised the brand new hot-ticket toy, only to be handed a yo-yo with a broken string.

Hot anger flared through her shock. She resisted the urge to stomp on his head. She settled for grasping the front of his t-shirt and yanking his bloodied face close to hers. "What the hell is wrong with you?"

"What's wrong with _me_? You're the one who just smashed my face in! I didn't think you were so –"

"You just didn't think," she interrupted. Rage was a mineshaft filled with lava boiling up inside her. Her spine heated from bottom to top and her skin prickled. Her vision started to spackle with grey-black flecks, so keen was her fury.

He didn't understand. Well, why would he? She couldn't make him understand, either, so instead she lashed out, wanting to wound in some other equivalency but not in control enough to know how. "You never think when it comes to pussy. You just see what you want and you try to take it. Sometimes it gets you into trouble, but you don't learn, do you? You never even consider that maybe –" She tried to keep yelling, but found herself verging on tears instead. Not good. She needed to get away before she started to blub. She couldn't let him see her like that. "You idiot. How _could_ you?"

She let go and ran out, but she didn't get far. Legend caught up with her at the gym door. It was a pull door. As she tried to yank it open, his flat palm slammed against it, holding it shut. She whirled and glared up at him. His face was bloodied and thunderous.

"Let go."

"No."

"Let go or I'll break your arm." She would, too. She hadn't been so angry since … well, in a long time. Her lips still tingled and her chin prickled where his stubble had rubbed.

"You damn near broke my nose. That entitles me to an explanation about why you went apeshit over one little kiss."

"It's not just –" She stopped herself. Regaining her self-control was like reeling in a heaving fishing net filled with electric eels. She blinked furiously and rattled the door under his hand in frustration. "Fuck!"

Legend coughed and spat out a gob of bloody mucus. It landed on his foot. "Aw, damn it. This just gets better and better."

"Let. Me. Go."

"Will you just –"

"_Let me go_!" It came out as a scream.

Legend's expression slammed shut. "No."

"Let me go or I swear I'll –"

"You'll do what?" He gazed levelly at her. "C'mon, Sureshot. Time to put your cards on the table."

"Like hell." The backs of her eyes stung. _Don't-don't-don't-don't-cryyyyyyy …_

"You went from hunky-dory, to violence, to wailing banshee, all in sixty seconds. That ain't normal. Even for girls who don't like guys, that ain't normal."

"I – what?"

"You're telling me you're not?"

"Not what?"

"Batting for the other team."

"How _dare_ you! Where do you get off? Just because I reject _your_ attempt at tonsil hockey, I must be _gay_?"

"So you're not?"

If anything, that just made her see red even more. "Are you high on some weird testosterone overload? It's none of your damn business whether I like men, women, animals, minerals or vegetables! I just object to being pawed by _your _greasy mitts."

"I wasn't pawing you. I kissed you. Once."

"It's the same thing!"

"No it isn't."

"It is to me!" She was back to screaming. _Calm down. Calm __**down**__. Quit losing it. _Her breathing hitched. Yeah, this didn't look at all bad or suspicious. "Let me go," she gritted. Almost in a whisper, she added, "Please."

Legend regarded her. "No."

"Damn it!" She kicked his shin.

He didn't even flinch. Nor did he move. All the intensity that should have gone into two eyes pooled in his one. It stared balefully at her, hard, assessing, and … troubled? "Sureshot," he said softly. "Talk to me."

"Fuck off."

"Naifu."

"That isn't my name."

"So what should I call you?"

"Don't call me anything. Just let me _go_."

"What happened to you?" He didn't add the rest of the question, but she sure as hell heard it: _to make you react so badly to something like this?_

Intellectually, she knew being offended at him changing the terms of their friendship couldn't justify her reaction. It was one kiss. He hadn't pushed his luck, he had just failed to ask and she hadn't expected it. Was that any justification for hurting him? For a regular girl, sure, an overemotional outburst might have been acceptable – if she was a hormonal _teenager_. However, Naifu was neither regular nor a teenager. Her reaction was out of character for both her personality and her station as a Turk. She knew that. She just couldn't help herself. She had gone overboard – completely over the top, histrionic, melodramatic, out of control, whatever you wanted to call it. Hey had both crossed a line, just not the same one.

She held herself steady only through supreme self-will. Legend continued to wait, but she was too keyed up to recognise the things in his stare.

"I didn't think you could cry," he said eventually.

She dropped her gaze. All at once the fight went out of her. Her shoulders slumped into roughly the shape of a rainbow stretched across the horizon, only there wasn't any pot of gold in her voice. "You saw my scars," she whispered. "Can't you figure it out?" _Why didn't_ _you figure it out before you kissed me?_

"I should've," he said. It was close to an apology. Apology's cousin. Through marriage. Several times removed.

"Can I go now?"

For a second she thought he was still going to hold the door. Then he removed his hand, but he didn't step back. If she opened it she would clobber him. Again.

She took a moment to look at the damage she had done to his face. Two separate strikes had left his nose in pretty bad shape. She hesitated before raising her hand towards him. This time he did flinch. She hesitated again.

"You're all gross," she said.

"I really do bring out your poetic side, don't I?" The small reference to a simpler moment between them spoke volumes – more than they could put into words otherwise.

Naifu shouldn't have reacted so badly. She had thought those old feelings were firmly dealt with. She had thought she had expunged the demons of her past and that the wounds had scarred over inside as well as out, tough and impenetrable. Apparently they hadn't. The unhappiness that she could still be blindsided by memories of her past was as paralysing as her anger had been. She felt raw, made freshly vulnerable by her own grief and anger.

"I'm sorry." The heat in his voice shocked her. He was pissed.

She realised after a second that he wasn't angry at her; he was angry _for_ her. He was looking at her in a way nobody had ever looked at her. His expression said he wanted hurt whoever had hurt her. Never mind that it had happened years ago, or that he didn't even know the full story; he wanted to fix her and it was killing him that he couldn't. It was such an alien expression for him. Yet, thinking back to all the time she'd spent with him, it wasn't so very weird. Legend wasn't as straightforward as she used to think. No, as she had wanted to think.

Like she was one to talk about not being straightforward once you got past the surface?

She shrugged. "Not your fault." Now who sounded like a sullen teenager? "It was a long time ago."

"Like that matters? I was out of line. I knew something wasn't right, but I kissed you anyway."

"It's no big deal."

"Yeah, it was. I screwed up. Timing, opportunity, signals, permission – I screwed up everything." He was holding his face with his other hand. He wiped at the mess with the bottom of his tee-shirt. It only made things worse. "And this really fucking hurts."

"Uh, sorry about that." She found that she meant it. All anger had leeched from her, leaving just exhaustion and a hint of guilt, like a dirty bath ring around the inside of her heart.

Did Turks even have hearts? Stupid question. Of course they did. She was a Turk, and she could feel every crack, fracture and splinter, both old and new, in _her_ heart.

Legend shook his head, but winced. "It was my own damn fault."

"The dent in my forehead and the blood on my knuckles say different. Here, let me take a look."

"It's fine."

"C'mere –"

"I said it's –"

"I said come here."

It was a battle of wills. She won. Legend's heart wasn't in it. He let her look, prodding experimentally at the swelling skin either side of his nose. He reared back like a small pony instead of a fully grown stallion.

"No nearly about it, that's a break. Sorry," she added awkwardly.

"Don't be. I was asking for it."

"Y'know, I don't think I like this humbled, apologetic Legend. It's just not you." Naifu let out a heavy breath, still grabbing for that overfull fishing net. "How about we draw a line under this whole episode and pretend it never happened?"

She expected him to agree, so she was surprised when he said, "I don't want to forget that this happened."

"Why the hell not? I beat you up for getting fresh with me. What's not worthy of forgetting – the insane embarrassment, the humiliation, or the pain?"

"The part where I'm sorry for my timing and misreading your signals, but not for actually kissing you."

She sucked in a breath. "I'm not that kind of girl, Legend." What she really meant was: _I'm not __**your**__ kind of girl_.

"I'm not asking you to be."

"I know how you think about women –"

"You know how _you_ _think_ I think about women."

She paused, processing that one. "Huh?"

"Not about you," he finished. The tee-shirt he had raised to cover the lower part of his face was really good for also covering his expression. She could have sworn he was embarrassed, except that to Legend embarrassment was what altruism was to cats.

Whatever. He couldn't be any more mortified than her.

She wasn't ready. She _wasn't ready_. Her shoulders tensed until she was practically wearing them as earmuffs. Her temper flared once more. It was hard to describe, but even harder to remember those weeks after her life changed. She had never known pain like it – not just the physical kind that had left her riddled with scars like tiger stripes, but the internal kind that grew like mildew, filling the corners of her mind and soul, and blackening inward. Nowadays she had taken that grief and buried it in a box deep inside – which Legend had unearthed with the equivalent of a landmine. No slow digging up the past for him. A few experimental jabs with a shovel in the Costa del Sol, and now this. The explosion he had caused had blown open the box and flung all her most painful memories into the air.

She remembered weeks of swirling, half-awake nightmares. She remembered waking, only to relive the whole ordeal again every time she thought about it. The hazy, painkiller-fuelled days under her old name had passed like an eternity, until Veld came and gave her a new one and a new purpose with which to block it all out. That was a dark place. She had never wanted to go back there again.

She stepped away from Legend. "I … I can't." She sounded young and stupid. Revolted with herself and her memories, she wrenched the door and ran through it.

She almost crashed into two people outside. She hadn't been expected anyone to be there, so only her excellent reflexes saved her.

"Bloody hell!" laughed a warm, aristocratic voice. "Whoa there, Nelly. Where's the fire?"

Richie and Helena stood like the least similar identical twins in history. Both had short blonde hair, blue-eyes, pale skin and Turk suits, but nobody could ever mistake one for the other – and not just because Richie was male and Helena was female. That in itself was misleading: Helena had a masculine air about her at all times, probably even while she slept, while Richie was so effeminate Naifu couldn't believe he wasn't gay. Richie had spoken. Helena just stared with that unnerving intensity she used on both friend and foe.

"Are you all right, Naifu?" Richie asked. "Or are the flying monkeys after you?" He laughed at his own joke. He always did. It never bothered him when nobody else laughed.

"Peachy keen. Couldn't be better. 'Scuse me." Naifu edged past them.

Helena barely turned her head, but her eyes followed Naifu like a portrait in an empty gallery. Naifu tried not to shudder. Helena wasn't easy to get on with at the best of times. Wind chill factor personified, that was her – which made it all the more startling that she and the garrulous Richie were such a good team.

"You have blood on your hand," Helena observed.

"Uh, whoops?" Naifu wiped her hand on her leg. "I gotta go … do something. Someplace else." She made her escape before they could protest.

She didn't slow until she had bolted her front door behind her. She leaned her forehead against it and took several deep breaths. It took every scrap of willpower to hold back the tide that had threatened to consume her once before and nearly destroyed her. Once upon a time, she had lost everything and everyone she ever cared about. She had worked hard to forget that, but with one kiss, Legend had opened her old wounds and poured salt into them.

"Thanks," she muttered. "Thanks a lot."


	33. Legend: Screw Up

**A/N****:** Incidentally, this chapter contains one of my favourite lines in the whole fic. Kudos if you can guess which one it is. ;)

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><p><strong>33. Legend – Screw Up<strong>

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><p>No doubt about it, Legend had taken a wrong turn somewhere, and he was now deep in uncharted Fuckedupistan. He would have punched himself, if his face didn't already feel like an elephant had trampled it – after first shitting in his mouth.<p>

"Oooouurgh …"

"Hark, I think I hear the sweet cry of the lesser spotted Legendary Turk."

Great. That was all he needed. "Go away, Buttercup."

"I'd tell you not to call me such a derisive nickname, but I kind of like that one. Much better than your last effort. What was it again, Hels?"

"Fuckface," said a deadpan female voice.

Brilliant. She was here too. Of course, you rarely got one of those two without the other. They were like magpies, charity-muggers or STDs – never welcome, hard to get rid of, and rarely turned up alone.

"That was it!" Richie crowed. "Graphic, disgusting and totally inappropriate. Oh yes, Buttercup is much better. I might even get my name changed legally: Buttercup the Terrific Turk. What do you think, Hels?"

"Don't call me Hels."

Different day, same routine. Legend turned to face them. He didn't run into Richie and Helena very often, but they both had the unnerving ability to get under his skin and irritate him like sand in a bathing suit. Knowing they were all on the same side only made them marginally more tolerable.

He knew his face looked bad when Richie threw up his hands in mock dismay. Helena was about as easy to read as a dead language carved in a soap bar that had been passed around a prison shower.

"What _have_ you been doing to yourself?" Richie cried. "Honestly, you can't stay out of trouble for five minutes, can you?"

Helena's eyes were like chips of ice. "Naifu did that to you." It wasn't a question.

Legend was too tired, too frustrated and too damn mad at himself to fight her as well. He might as well have tried to fight a blizzard with a hairdryer and no plug socket. "Yup."

"Why?"

"Because I had a booger hanging out and she thought a fist was the best way to get rid of it." Exasperation frosted his words. Fight fire with fire and ice with … well, sarcasm. He was crap at being icy. He preferred to blow up stuff that pissed him off.

Helena narrowed her gaze. He was older, taller more experienced and more muscular. Why, then, could she make him feel three inches tall? "You are an idiot," she said, quieter than snow. He got the sense she knew exactly what had happened before she got there, though he doubted Naifu had told her. With Helena, you always got the sense she knew everything about you, including the small print in your mind even you didn't bother to read. Creepy woman.

Richie looked between Legend and his partner and back again. By comparison, he was a puppy who bounded from everything to everything else with the same amount of exuberance – conversations, people or fights. Legend knew better than to assume Richie was harmless because of his mannerisms. Richie was a former wealthy playboy, but he was no pansy. He could wield nunchaku with deadly force and accuracy, without hitting himself in the nuts like most people who just thought they looked cool. Plus, Richie didn't shrink from the nastier parts of being a Turk. He knew just as well as everyone else which soap was best to wash dried blood spray from your eyelashes and which drycleaner didn't ask questions about getting red stains out of white shirts.

"Does someone want to fill me in? Present company excluded, of course. I don't mix work and pleasure." Richie cast his own incisive gaze at Legend. He was still smiling, which only made it worse. "Mayhap that's where you went wrong this time, chum?"

Legend gaped. Did he have it printed in neon letters across his forehead? Maybe he was just getting too old for this shit. Maybe he was losing his edge. Maybe he was losing his _mind._

"I gotta go see a medic," he snapped, shoving past them. They were dressed in workout gear. At least they hadn't been intentionally spying – not that it made much difference. "The gym's all yours."

"And a grand state you've left it in, too," Richie said sardonically. "What a ghastly mess. Which design school did you learn at: a slaughterhouse?"

Legend banged the door shut behind him and stomped away. He cursed himself and his overactive libido. He had pushed things too far, refused to let them go, and where had it got him? Abso-fucking-lutely nowhere. Less than nowhere. Square One was way off in the distance.

If it had been any other girl, he would have given up already. Either reel in the fish or cut the bait; that was his motto. Yet with Naifu something was different. She was damaged goods and he, sick freak that he was, couldn't leave her alone. The image of her face, screwed up and yelling at him, was tattooed on his brain. He wanted to wipe away that pain and make her smile again: maybe even get one of those rare real smiles that reached her eyes, not just the mischievous smirk she usually used. She provoked such a range of emotions in him he wasn't sure what to make of it. It was fucked up. It was stupid. It was frustrating. He dug his heels into the sand even as the connection he had made to her dragged him slowly over the edge of a cliff into a chasm of things he had thought died in him years ago when he picked up a charred red shoe. He had given up this life last time the contents of that chasm came into play.

Turks didn't cling or linger over death. They didn't feel guilt or dissatisfaction over the job. And they _definitely_ didn't fall in love with their colleagues.

Maybe he should have stayed in retirement after all.


	34. Eber: Messenger

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><p><strong>34. Eber - Messenger<strong>

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><p>Eber wasn't sure what was up, but <em>something <em>was wrong with Naifu. Maybe he was just attuned to the fickle ways of females during their hormone cycles – Chloe was a nightmare and freely admitted she turned into a harpy five days of every month – but as soon as Naifu met him that morning he could tell something was wrong, and that she was trying to hide it. She didn't want to talk, which was fine, but Eber wasn't a hard-hearted man. He wondered if that would get him taken out of the Turks and put back in an office. Whatever the case, he was still green enough to this job to care about his partner-for-the-day and want to make her feel better.

Naifu resisted his efforts like a sulky clam. She only loosened when they got their itinerary from Tseng and set off for another visit under the Plate.

Chloe had been horrified when she found out he was moving departments. Denzel didn't really understand. He had decided his dad was now some sort of espionage agent and lorded it over the other kids in his class. Not one of them believed him, much to his chagrin. He regularly came home complaining how everyone called him a liar, until Eber had taken him to one side and said maybe it wasn't a good idea to tell everyone something that really ought to stay secret.

"Oh," Denzel had said, tapping the side of his nose. "Riiiiight."

"That kid slays me," Eber had said to Chloe as their son ran off to his room.

"Just as long as nothing else does. I want you to promise you'll come home to me every day."

Eber had hesitated. He couldn't make a promise like that. Or he could, he just didn't know if he could keep it. He wasn't stupid. There had to be a reason for the high staff turnover in the Turks, and he didn't think it was because they were all taking early retirement or leaving to start their own bookstores.

Chloe had taken him by the lapels and kissed him hard. There had been desperation in her kiss, of a kind he hadn't felt from her since before Denzel was born – possibly even before they were married. She'd kissed like she was worried she might lose him, and that terrified her more than anything else in the world.

"Promise you'll at least try."

"_That_ I can promise you."

She'd accepted, but she hadn't been mollified. Chloe's problem wasn't that she didn't understand the pull his job had over him, taking him away from his family all the time. Her problem was that she understood far too well.

"It's a pay rise," he had said, trying to buoy her. "We can finally buy those little luxuries we've been promising ourselves."

"Like a new vacuum?"

"I was thinking more like a widescreen colour TV with surround sound, plus a cooler filled with beer and a cable that stretches all the way into the middle of the sitting room."

The memory of her laugh sustained him at moments like this, when he felt thoroughly out of his depth and didn't want to look over his shoulder in case he could no longer see the shore.

Naifu's forehead puckered. Chloe's did that when she was worried about bills and their ability to pay them. Eber drew closer, but not too close. Being around so many hair-triggers had given him a new and healthy respect for personal space – especially after his stint accompanying that bad-tempered martial artist, Youhei. She had nearly cracked his head open several times, claiming he'd startled her, but he didn't believe all of them were accidents.

"Hey, are you all right?" he asked Naifu.

She blinked at him. "Creaky brain," she said after a moment. "I hate coffee, so it takes me a while to get up to speed in the mornings."

"Right." Eber was unconvinced. "How's your partner?"

"Bored and cranky. Cranky and bored. I'm actually a little surprised he's still stuck at base. Usually paperwork comes after a mission or as a form of punishment. He'd give his eyeteeth to be in your place right now, enjoying my fabulous company." She flashed him a more familiar bright smile. "But I get to corrupt you on my own until his return."

"At which point you'll palm me off to some other poor unsuspecting fool ripe for babysitting duties."

"Palm you off? That sounds so wrong."

"You're telling me. I'm married."

Naifu pulled up short. "Listen, don't spread that around, okay? Not that it would ever happen, since most people who'd want leverage over a Turk are pant-poopingly scared of the wrath of Shinra, but it's not a good idea to broadcast it if you have innocents in your life that the really dodgy scumbags can use against you."

Eber nodded soberly. If anyone ever touched Chloe or Denzel, he would kill them without hesitation or regret. He knew this with a cold clarity that shocked but didn't surprise him. His family was his life. He would do anything and everything in his power to protect them.

Naifu made sure he got the message before starting off again. "Most Turks are free and unattached. It makes it easier that way." She spoke idly, but her words made Eber shiver. It was easier not to leave too many repercussions for people to deal with if you turned up dead. Turks kept their ties minimal. Whether it was so they wouldn't be missed, or because the job itself prevented a lot of socialising outside the department, Eber still wasn't sure. The Turks were an odd bunch.

It was sobering to think he was one of them now.

Well, until he screwed up and they bumped him back down to cubicle monkey. Maybe even lower. He could end up in the _post room _if he wasn't careful.

Afterwards, he wasn't sure whether the screw-up was actually his fault. His head cracked against the side of the building with considerable force, so a lot of what happened was a blur. The things he did remember flickered between images and sounds like a scratched DVD skipping scenes: a figure dropping from a fire escape above him, the darkness of an alley, someone cutting off his windpipe, Naifu's shout, the clatter of metal, and the dreadful certainty that he wasn't going home tonight. He thought he fought back. He definitely tried, but when it was bone versus brickwork, not even the worst gambler bet against the bricks. His attacker bounced his head off the wall several times and left him in a crumpled heap, trying to make his arms and legs work and panicking when they wouldn't.

"Hey, blondie." Someone dragged him up by his hair. He couldn't focus on the face. A dozen places on his body screamed. "We got a message for you to deliver to Rodriguez. Either he shows his coward face, or we show him his girlfriend's, only she won't be attached to it no more and it'll be nailed to a building in the slums."

"He's out of it, boss."

"Damn it. Paper. Give me some paper! And a pen. Who the –"

_Naifu … _Eber sank into unconsciousness and heard no more.


	35. Naifu: Fly in a Web

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><p><strong>35. Naifu – Fly in a Web<strong>

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><p>Sometimes you wake up from a dream. Sometimes you wake up <em>in <em>a dream. And sometimes you wake up in a nightmare.

Naifu opened her eyes with effort. They felt swollen and gritty. So did her mouth. Her left cheek was on fire and ... yes, breathing provoked the grinding pain of cracked ribs. She didn't move for a minute, feigning unconsciousness a while longer so she could feel out injuries and try to establish where she was, how long had passed, and what the hell was going on.

She half expected to see the metal walls of a packing crate and hear the wash of ocean waves. This whole waking-up-after-a-severe-beating thing was getting to be a bad habit, like eating cheesy pizza before bed or leaving the toilet seat up.

Her arms were tied above her head. She was vertical. She had to lift her chin off her chest to breathe properly. Dried blood caked the insides of her nostrils. Each piece of the puzzle came together to make a disjointed whole. She vaguely remembered someone getting a hit in with his elbow which had broken some of her ribs. She also remembered cleaving off three of the guy's fingers with one of her knives. He had screamed like a stuck pig – right before one of the others who had attacked them she and Eber kicked her in the kidneys. She would be peeing blood after a strike like that –

Wait-a-cotton-picking-second – Eber! The guys who had attacked them had smashed his face against a wall. She remembered turning to see it happen. Was he okay?

Naifu let her eyes adjust to the poor light and looked around. Eber's blond head and lank body were noticeably absent. So were any windows. This place was big, like some sort of warehouse or storage facility, all white surfaces and sharp angles with halogen strip-lights. The walls were damp and it was cold, with that funny smell you got when a building had been in disuse for a while after a lifetime of bustle. When she finally twitched her arms and legs, unwilling to draw attention to herself, her wrists and ankles stayed locked together. The rattle of chains told her she was in deep doo-doo – as if she hadn't already worked _that_ out.

"So you're awake."

A figure detached itself from the gloom. Tall and rangy, he moved with the kind of grace she had seen in people who grew up on the streets, where looking over your shoulder was a requirement if you wanted to make your fifth birthday. He drew closer. She could see his hair was brown, but not dirty or mousy. His eyes were an even darker shade; they appeared almost black in this light and glittered at her.

"For a while there I thought I'd hit you too hard. You sleep like the dead. Probably got a concussion."

"You sound really concerned," she shot back, twitching her arms. They were numb. She needed them in working order if she was going to construct a doable escape plan. Where were her weapons? She wondered how long she'd been hanging like this and where Eber was. Had their attackers left him behind when they took her? Why, and for what purpose? She forced herself to calm down before her thoughts could spiral into panic like some civilian who didn't know any better.

"What is this, a really weird way to pick up dates? Or were you missing a shop mannequin and recruited me to fill in? I'll tell you right now, I look crappy in a skirt. My legs are too short and I can't wear heels to make them look longer. I fall on my ass. A lot."

He laughed. "You've got a sense of humour! I like that."

"I'm so glad you approve."

"It stands to reason. There's no way he'd leave for anyone who couldn't keep up with him."

"What? He? Which he?"

"Rodriguez." The man's eyes glittered even more intensely.

"Rodriguez? You mean Rod?" Her brain clicked like a keyboard under the fingers of an inept typist spelling out: _Oh crap._ "Are you the famous Alejandro himself, or just another one of his goons?"

"He mentioned me!" That laugh again. It was actually a nice laugh, warm and rich like a mug of really expensive hot chocolate. The juxtaposition with his expression was startling, and not in a good way. His face turned what should have been a pleasant sound into something creepy. Alejandro kept his eyes wide open when he laughed. On most people the skin at the corners crinkled up, but he stared like he was trying to pop his eyeballs right out of his head.

Naifu tried to struggle without appearing to. "He mentioned that you put a contract on his head."

"We have unfinished business." Alejandro twinkled his fingers. "You, for instance."

She knew she should concentrate on freeing herself and getting out of here, possibly with some butt-kicking on the side, but his words brought her up short. "Me?"

"I wondered for ages why he'd ever leave the gang. The Rage Riders were his life. He built us outta nothing, took each of us in and made us worth something. He poured his heart and soul into making us the best. He was _devoted_ to us." Alejandro's voice climbed a few notches and his fists clenched. He shook out his fingers like he had cramp. "So I knew he wouldn't have left just because he got bored. It had to be something else. Then I saw the two of you out together, like two peas in a well-paid pod in your snazzy suits. As soon as I saw you together, it all clicked in my head. The way you acted around him; how you talked back and he didn't put you in your place; how he protected you when you were in danger. He never would have tolerated that from someone he wasn't fucking."

Naifu flinched, which was ridiculous. Words were just words. If she could endure her injuries without reacting, she should be able to take Alejandro's accusation. Unfortunately, the jigsaw pieces just kept slotting together in her head, and they were making an increasingly unpleasant image.

_Crap on toast._

"Do you have any idea what him leaving did to us?" Alejandro went on. "Of course not. You didn't care. You got what you wanted, and screw everyone else, right? Only now you gotta pay the piper, bitch, and I can carry a merry tune." He twinkled his fingers again, this time in imitation of playing a flute. He pursed his lips and pretended to blow into a mouthpiece. He had a sensual mouth, with well-proportioned features above to strengthen his charm without making the lines of his face seem harsh. He was what a lot of people would have called a 'pretty boy'.

He was also very disturbed. It was clear in his voice and body language: Alejandro and sanity were not on close terms. The trick now was to figure out whether they were merely casual acquaintances or totally estranged. One would be bad, but trussed up like this, unable to fight back or run away, Naifu knew the second would be worse.

Old fear woke inside her. She felt like she was in one of her nightmares. She smelled hessian and tasted her own tears, even though she wasn't crying. She shook off the memory and focussed on the present. If she broke down now it was all over.

"Look, I hate to burst your bubble – except, actually, I don't – but Rod and I are _so_ not what you think."

"Ah-ah-ah." Alejandro wagged his index finger. "Can't fool me, babycakes."

"I'm not trying to."

"I saw you. You were hanging off him like skin off a leper."

"A truly revolting mental image, but it doesn't change anything. You've got the wrong idea. We're colleagues, not lovers. We work together and got assigned to each other. He didn't pick me and I didn't pick him, we just ended up working the same beat. What I _can_ tell you is that you'd better let me down from here, or things will go badly for you when the rest of my colleagues get here."

The Turks would come. She remembered now: right before she passed out she had seen Alejandro pin a note to Eber's chest. Asking Shinra for a ransom seemed pretty ludicrous, but his glassy stare made ludicrous a possibility. You couldn't predict what a diseased mind would consider reasonable behaviour. She had given up trying a long time ago, when her work as a Turk brought her into contact with the biggest, raggiest, baggiest ragbag of nutzoids outside a nuthouse. She hated trying to predict crazy people. Mostly reacting to them was the best you could do, which was difficult when you couldn't move your arms or legs and your own chin was trying to compress your chest so you couldn't breathe.

Rod had never mentioned his second in command being crazy. To hear Rod tell it, Alejandro was a good guy, competent and together, but not Turk material. She couldn't see that description in the man staring at her. To her, Alejandro looked ominous as a dust cloud on the horizon when you know there is a herd of wild horses in the area and you're on foot. A shiver went down her spine.

_Keep it together_, she ordered herself_. You've faced worse than this. You've survived nastier situations. _Another shiver raced down her spine. _Yeah, and remember what happened __**then**_.

Her feet had some kind of weights attached, stretching and immobilising her since she was too short to reach the floor. Her shoulders ached and inhaling a proper lungful of air meant tensing her arms to drag the trunk of her body into a better position. She couldn't keep that kind of tension going for long, plus it made her broken ribs scream. Maybe the plan was to let her slowly suffocate.

Well, nuts to that. She was already frantically thinking of ways out of this mess. Nothing had struck her with blinding, this-must-be-done-now inspiration, but she had a few ideas. If only Alejandro would come close enough for her to head-butt him. Or if she could fold her midriff enough to get up some momentum on the foot-weights maybe she could swing them into his gut –

Alejandro tilted his head to one side. "Nope, I still don't get it."

"Huh?"

"What does he see in you that could make him betray us? You're built like a little boy. No chest. No hips. You even got your hair cut all short." His eyes narrowed. He was blinking a lot, as if he constantly had dust in his eyes. "Maybe that was the attraction. Chick in a suit and men's shoes. That'd make more sense." All at once his expression became savage. He glared at Naifu with such disgust that he looked like a completely different person. "He could've come to _me_ if that's what he wanted. He didn't have to leave." Then his face cleared and he swept his wavy brown hair back with one hand, heaving a deep sigh. He looked like a model on a shampoo commercial. "But that's easily fixed with some explanations. I must not have made myself clear enough to him. Never mind. As soon as you're outta the way, he'll start to see things my way. He'll _look_ my way without you blocking the view."

His sleeve fell back, allowing Naifu to see the track marks on his arm. A lot more things made sense – even fewer good ones than before.

_Lucid,_ she thought, real panic prickling her belly. She couldn't keep the feeling at bay this time. Sour fear sprang to life at the back of her throat. Crazy was bad enough, but being at the mercy of someone who was crazy, using drugs and currently high was like finding a big list called Very Bad Things and checking every single box.

She tried to swallow again, but the sides of her throat stuck together. "Alejandro," she said, opting for a reasonable tone instead of the insults she wanted to hurl. "Look, this is stupid. I already told you that Rod and I aren't an item. We're just colleagues." She decided not to reveal they were also friends. "He became a Turk for his own reasons and I became a Turk for my own reasons. Neither of us joined because of the other." _Let me down, you son of a bitch._ "If you let me loose, we can go find him, you two can talk and sort out your differences, and –"

"Talk? _Talk_?" Alejandro laughed. "He had his chance to talk. He walked instead. Walked to you Turk freaks and left us behind. Do you understand how difficult it is to stay independent in Midgar? The Rage Riders were a small outfit. We couldn't hold up without him. He knew that, but he still left. He left me in charge. Like I was supposed to be grateful or something! He left me responsible for everything and everyone! I took up the slack, but I could only do so much to protect our boys. I could only put myself in the line of fire so much." He laughed again, but all humour was gone. "Lucky for us there are so many sick fucks in the world." His eyes glittered with more than Naifu had first thought, but the bitterness behind their chemical intensity was genuine. Alejandro's feelings about Rod were complicated and wrapped up with whatever had happened to him and the Rage Riders after Rod left. Despite the fact he hadn't been there, Alejandro blamed Rod.

Naifu recalled what she knew about Lucid. Amongst other things, it messed with the body's nerve endings, specifically targeting and confusing pain and pleasure receptors so their signals became mixed up in the brain. In theory, you could hurt yourself but feel intense pleasure if you got the dosage of Lucid right. It was popular as a sexual stimulant for those who knew how to strike the right balance and not overdose or underdose themselves. It was especially popular amongst the sadomasochistic crowd, since it allowed people to be rough with reluctant first-time partners without the experience being unpleasant for either. For that very reason its use was also on the increase in sexual assaults.

Rod had said he was surprised that Alejandro would allow the Rage Riders to be absorbed into a bigger gang without a fight. Smaller gangs were often humiliated for sport by those who took them over, with violence only a heartbeat behind the humiliation. Yet maybe Alejandro _had_ fought to protect his gang when it became clear it was either join a bigger gang or end up dead in a gutter. Gang life was merciless. A strong leader was essential, but strength came in many forms. You didn't have to pull a knife or fire a gun to fight, and you didn't have to get stabbed or take a bullet to protect.

Suddenly Carlito's last words came back to Naifu. Her stomach lurched.

"_You did it. You ruined him. What they been doing to him. S'all your fault."_

She stared at Alejandro. "You've been taking their beatings, haven't you? The ones meant for the rest of the Rage Riders. You've been using Lucid to make it more bearable and you've let your new gang beat you up instead of them. It would mean more to them, wouldn't it – pounding on the leader? Humiliating you means more than hurting your boys."

His stare turned flinty, his voice as dry and flat as hot asphalt. "Smart bitch, ain't you? You got half the story right." He tipped his head back, staring down his nose at her. "It's like dinner theatre. Soon as they get the urge for some entertainment, they bring in one of the Rage Riders. They like boys, y'see. They can go to whorehouses all they want, but it loses its shine after a while. That's when they look at the Rage Riders, and the Riders stop being gangmates and start being playthings. They know I'll step in. They know I'll beg to take his place. They know what I'll do, and what they can do." He gave a short laugh. "And yeah, Lucid makes it good."

_Oh my god …_ Despite her own position, a surge of pity swept through her. It was quickly replaced with fear. If Alejandro blamed Rod – and by corollary herself – for what he and the other Rage Riders had been through, and he wasn't thinking sanely with chemicals in his bloodstream, then she was in deep, deep trouble.

"Rodriguez will come for his bitch," Alejandro was saying.

"I'm not his." She struggled to keep her voice level. "We just work together. Alejandro, I can help you. I'm a Turk. I can get you papers, safe passage out of Midgar to someplace you can start a new life – a better life for you and your boys."

"I take care of my boys. It's what I do. We're city people. This is our city. But sometimes a man gotta take care of his own needs, too. I tried when Rodriguez was still with us, but he never got it. Of course he didn't. Didn't see the wood for the trees, did he? More interested in chicks with dicks, like you."

This just got worse and worse. Naifu's lungs felt compressed by the weight of so many dire things coming together at once. Her insides curdled as she realised the full extent of Alejandro's anger. The saying was wrong: there _was_ something worse than a scorned woman, and he was staring right at her. She was fully clothed, but she felt as vulnerable as she had years ago when a hessian bag went over her head.

Fear shook her like a ragdoll. It was shameful – she was a _Turk _– but this was too close to what had happened. Familiarity made her veins cold. Being kissed by Legend had been a hand grenade to her memories, but this was a field of mines. She had no way of making it through them without setting them off.

_Legend_...

Naifu suddenly wished she had been more receptive to his kiss. She had spent all night thinking about it, unable to sleep as thoughts whirled around her mind like a flock of disturbed chocobos. She had eventually concluded that she would confront him after her mission with Eber today, throw everything in the air and see where the pieces landed. Whatever happened after that had to be better than what she was already feeling.

It had been too long. It was time to end the lies – to herself as much as anyone else, every time she claimed she was fine. She had decided to tell him exactly why she had reacted so badly and see whether he looked at her like a broken doll or a real person after he knew the truth. She was sick of running from her past. She couldn't pretend it hadn't happened, and she no longer wanted it to control her as much as she now realised it did. She had thought she had left it all behind when she became a Turk; that in putting on the powerful symbol of the suit she had regained the power she had lost that day. Now she knew she had given those bastards who had hurt her back then more control than ever by ignoring the consequences of what they had done to her. She had clawed her identity back, step by painful step, but she hadn't gotten _past_ anything. Not really.

Legend could have helped. He was someone she could finally see herself swallowing her pride enough to _ask_. Not even Veld had made her feel that way. If she didn't make it out of this, she wasn't going to get the chance to do the unthinkable and ask Legend for help. She wouldn't get the chance to share any kind of future with him, as friends or anything else.

She had to fight. No way was she going to just give up and take what some tragic but crazed biker could dish out. Not now; not after everything she had gone through to get to this point with her own sanity intact.

_You picked the wrong girl to kidnap, Alejandro. I'm no damsel in distress. Just ask those punks in the Costa del Sol. _

Alejandro couldn't see into her thoughts. If he noticed a change in her expression, he gave no sign of it. "We used to come here on food raids," he said conversationally. "It's been closed down a while now. Nobody comes here no more. You could scream for hours and nobody'd know. I got my boys on the doors. They're watching for intruders. One sniff of someone interrupting us and they'll raise the alarm. They're loyal to _me_ now." That flash of disgust and savagery again. "Like Carlito. I owe you for him, bitch. He was only trying to pay Rodriguez back for the wrong he done us_. _Carlito was headstrong, and yeah, he went off on his own when he shouldn't, but he was a good kid, and you killed him like some worthless dog."

"I'm sorry," Naifu said, meaning it. "But I wasn't going to let anyone shoot my partner."

"You're not sorry, but you will be."

"You don't scare me."

"We'll see."

"I've dealt with worse than you before."

"Probably." He shrugged. He advanced on a metal table covered in a sheet, which he pulled off with a flourish. On it was arranged a set of tools better suited to a butcher's shop – or slaughterhouse.

The hair on the back of Naifu's neck stood up. She took another look at her surroundings. Smooth white walls, the better for cleaning off spatter. Metal floors with drains in the middle, bevelled so liquid could flow into them. 'Closed down a while now' – maybe since Shinra realised it was cheaper to import synthesised muck than to produce real food for people below the Plate. The walls were thick, with no windows, as if someone had gone to a lot of trouble to prevent the neighbours hearing the dying screams of animals …

Naifu struggled in earnest. Alejandro didn't react, except to pick up a cleaver and walk towards her.


	36. Rod: Regretful

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><p><strong>36. Rod – Regretful<strong>

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><p>Rod was beside himself. Questions buzzed in his head like bees, the littlest stinging him every time he tried to ignore them in favour of the biggest: where had Naifu been taken and where could he get wheels in a hurry?<p>

"Where do you think you're going?" Tseng appeared like a ghost as he sprinted down the corridor. He actually managed to startle Rod into stopping. You always stopped for Tseng. Always.

"Don't try to keep me here," he snarled, knowing Tseng's question was rhetorical.

"You're confined to desk duty."

"Fuck desk duty."

Tseng raised an eyebrow. "You realise it's suspension if you defy these orders, and the end of your career if you do what you're planning." It wasn't even a pretend question this time.

"You realise you spout a lot of shit when you say Turks look after their own," Rod shot back. "I know there was a note pinned to the new guy when they found him."

"His name is Eber –"

"Whatever."

"- and that's why I've already dispatched Helena and Richie to retrieve Naifu," Tseng finished calmly.

"The message was for me." Anger surrounded Rod's words. If he hadn't overheard Tseng speaking to Richie and Helena, nobody would have told him what was going on.

"Exactly."

His anger burst like a water-balloon filled with acid. "To hell with you and your scheming! You want to keep me locked up? Fine, but as long as I'm on my feet and not behind bars, I'm going to find Naifu."

"You're too involved with this."

"Damn straight!"

"No, you misunderstand. Your objectivity is too compromised. You'd be a liability in the field."

"Why? Because it's my old gang? I already killed one of them."

"No, because you're so attached to Naifu."

"She's my partner!"

"Exactly," Tseng repeated. He was maddeningly calm.

Rod stared at him, trying to figure out all his possible angles on this, but with Tseng it was impossible to tell. He could think his way through a corkscrew and come out the other side making everyone believe his thoughts were straight, had always been straight, and would always be straight. Tseng had rat bastard cunning coming out of his ears and the perfect poker face. In that instant Rod hated him more than he had ever hated anyone – except Alejandro.

Rod's fists clenched. He didn't have time for this. Naifu was in trouble and it was all his fault. He had to find and rescue her before … he didn't want to think what came after that. All that mattered was getting her back and finally finishing what Alejandro and he had started. Whatever happened, however it ended, it _would_ end tonight.

"I'm. Going." Rod's voice was steely. The whole atmosphere in the corridor felt like how a seismic metre might look right before an earthquake hit: too much activity in too small a space, just waiting to explode.

Tseng eyed him. "Agents are already on the case. You aren't needed."

"They don't know Alejandro."

"Evidently neither do you. Or is this more you've been hiding?" Tseng's gaze was intense and remote at the same time. Rod found himself looking away. "You didn't volunteer any information about him when he first started making threats against you."

Rod winced, but kept it inside where Tseng couldn't see. "Didn't seem relevant. It was personal."

"Which is exactly why I say you're too involved to be suitable for this assignment. That was a bad judgment call because you're thinking from a personal perspective. Helena and Richie can be objective and completely professional."

"But Naifu is –"

"Out of your hands." Tseng used his Big Boss voice. Rod hated that voice. Tseng didn't bring it out often, but when he did there was no point even trying to fight him. "You compromised this company and its operatives with your self-interest and pride. You have risked the safety and wellbeing of your colleagues. We deal in information and what _you_ withheld was vital on several levels. Don't make things worse for yourself. Go back to your desk and prepare that report on the Rage Riders as I asked."

"But –"

"Now."

Rod glared. Tseng's answering stare was devoid of emotion.

This was Rod's fault and he knew it. He had put Naifu in the path of danger – more than usual, anyway. Danger she wasn't getting paid to face. Alejandro had upped the ante and entered into a new stage in his weird game of cat and mouse – or cat and cat, as he was about to find out. No way was Rod going to hide like a mouse in a hole anymore. This was a fresh line they had crossed and, depending how, when and if they found Naifu, the bonds of old friendship, already broken, were about to be well and truly smashed. She hadn't asked to be involved in his personal shit. A welter of emotions ribboned through Rod – guilt, fury, frustration, fear. Yes, fear: on Naifu's behalf, at what Alejandro had apparently become, and at the sheer fact of what he, himself, was contemplating. The Turks and his ambitions were all Rod had left. Would he really throw them all away like he had thrown away the Rage Riders? He had tried for everything but might end up with nothing. Was anything – or anyone –worth that?

His fists were so tight his nails cut into his palms. He forced himself to loosen his grip and nodded, once, at Tseng. It wasn't hard to make it look convincingly grudging.

Tseng didn't nod back, but his expression implied a nod. How was that even possible? Rod didn't know, just as he didn't know whether Tseng actually believed his acquiescence. Rod turned away and stalked in the direction of the offices.

When he looked around Tseng was still there, but he had his phone out and was keying in a number. "Helena? Where are you now?"

Rod made it all the way to the office doors before he stopped – and he didn't stop because he suddenly had a brilliant plan. He stopped because a figure appeared in front of him, seemingly out of nowhere. It was disturbing how people kept doing that. This person, however, was the fire to Tseng's ice. Fury radiated off him, so hot and fierce it felt like the air in the corridor should shimmer with heat-haze.

"You absolute asshole," Legend snarled.

Rod juddered backwards under the force of the shove. "Hey!" He brought his fists up. "Watch it!"

"Like you watched out for Naifu?"

Rod's fists dropped. "I didn't …"

"Didn't what? Didn't know what would happen? Didn't want her involved? Didn't want to go crying to Tseng about the death-threats in case it made you look like a wuss? If your crazy homie has hurt her," Legend threatened, "I'm holding you personally responsible." His one eye blazed. Rod knew in an instant that whatever their relationship had been before – co-workers, tenuous friends, uneasy but respectful colleagues – it was gone now. Legend didn't just hate his guts, he wanted to cut them out with a rusty knife, roast them over fiery coals and throw the smoking remains into a mako reactor. What he promised for Alejandro was much, much worse.

And Rod couldn't bring himself to feel bad for them. He was too angry and disappointed in himself. This was his fault. He had caused this to happen. Whichever way you looked at it, the problems traced back to him and his piss-poor judgement.

"Alejandro is _not_ my homie," he growled.

"Good, because if you don't kill him, I will, and then I'll kill you for not doing it first."

Rod met Legend's gaze. He meant it; he would kill them both if Naifu had been hurt. Rod got an inkling of what the Wutaians had feared during the war – the fabled 'God of the Death of the Battlefield'. Did Naifu really mean that much to the guy? As far as Rod had been aware, they weren't an item. Naifu had about as much interest in sex as he did in nuclear physics, and Legend was a known womaniser who couldn't stay faithful even if his current lover poised his tackle in a meat grinder.

None of which diminished the look in Legend's eye, or Rod's certainty that they were going to go find Naifu, orders and Tseng be damned.

"What's your plan?" he asked.

"Blow this popsicle stand. Rescue Naifu. Eviscerate whoever took her."

"And how do you plan on doing any part of that? We don't got the note Alejandro left, and you can bet nobody will help us get –" Rod blinked at the piece of paper Legend held up.

"I lifted it from the evidence locker."

"You'll be caught."

"Not if I ain't here."

Rod read what was written on the note. All colour drained from his face. "Oh shit."

"Yeah," Legend snapped. He had obviously already read Alejandro's confession of love and hate, followed by what he was planning and where Rod had to go to try and prevent it. Why else had he come straight to Rod?

The depth of Legend's anger became a lot more understandable. To him, Naifu hadn't just gotten mixed up in Rod's problems, she had been dragged into them and held responsible for things she had nothing to do with. Alejandro had addressed the note specifically to Rod and constantly referred to Naifu as 'your whore' or 'your bitch'. No wonder Tseng had refused to let Rod see this. There was no way could Rod sit tight in Shinra Tower after reading it.

He stared. He had misread the situation totally. Alejandro wasn't just playing the part of an old friend betrayed by his leader. He had cast himself as the spurned lover. He imagined himself betrayed on more levels than Rod had anticipated, and everyone knew affairs of the heart were even messier than politics. You couldn't calculate how vindictive a spurned lover could be, especially an unbalanced one. Rod had always thought of Alejandro as his friend and successor. He hadn't realised Alejandro wanted more, or thought he deserved it for their years together at the head of the Rage Riders. the way Alejandro told it, he and Rod had been destined for each other, which had been ruined when the Turks, and especially Naifu, temped Rod away and left Alejandro to pick up the pieces. Rod knew he had been short-sighted about what life would be like for the Rage Riders after he joined Shinra, but it was worse than anything he could have imagined.

"I didn't know," he said, fists trembling. "I didn't _know_. I'm not like that. I don't swing that way –" He wondered why he felt like he had to defend his masculinity to Legend at a time like this. The last thing on Legend's mind right now was who Rod had or hadn't slept with.

"Save it. Whether you do or you don't is beside the point. What matters is what _he_," Legend shook the note, "intends to do next." He wrinkled his nose in disgust. "Not that I don't trust Blondie and Blondie the Sequel, but I'm not willing to take any chances on Naifu's safety with this crackpot."

"We gotta get to her." Rod examined the note again. There were cryptic clues only he could have figured out about her location – places and events Alejandro referred to from when they were kids. "I think I know where she is. Or I know where to start looking. He may have left clues in a trail to throw the other Turks off the scent. It's me he wants. She's just the bait to get me to come to him."

Legend's expression darkened further. "I can get us out of the building without being spotted and I can get us fast transport. You just get us there and do what needs to be done."

Rod didn't hesitate, though part of him knew he should tell Tseng what he had figured out. He wasn't withholding information, he just knew that if he shared it right this second he would be forcibly locked up until this was over.

"I'll do it." The air suddenly felt a lot heavier in his lungs. "I'll finish this, you can be sure of that. One way or another, it ends tonight."

"You'd better finish it," Legend said grimly. "Or I will."


	37. Naifu: Not Quite Rescued

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><p><strong>37. Naifu – Not Quite Rescued<strong>

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><p>Naifu had hit that washed out sensation that comes from too much exertion over too little time. She hurt so much that even relaxing her muscles made them ache. Sweat dripped into her eyes, turning her vision hot and grainy. It also turned it red. Not just sweat then. She wasn't surprised. She didn't have the energy to be angry anymore, either. Everything was used up. She couldn't even tense her arms or legs to rattle her restraints, a tiny act of defiance that proved she hadn't yet accepted her fate. She had fought with everything she had, but she had lost.<p>

She was alone and defenceless, and she hated it. Fear was an old companion, but this wasn't fear. What she felt now had been dredged from deep inside, where her darkest memories lay. It went beyond words: a bone-deep chill and a certainty that, even if she survived, she would never feel secure again. She had felt this only once before, back in Old Corel when bandits raided the homes on the outskirts looking for food and found only women and children guarding their meagre stores. She shut her eyes, trying to drive the images away, but they loomed through her exhaustion so vividly she couldn't actually be sure they weren't happening now.

"No," she murmured brokenly. "Please … no more …"

Someone said something. She wasn't sure what. Was she a girl or a woman? Who was she even talking to right now? She hated herself for begging, but that was the little girl talking. That wasn't the woman, Naifu. Naifu was strong. Naifu didn't take crap from anyone.

Veld had helped her regain her security after his band of Turks came to clean up the mess in Old Corel. They hadn't come because of the attack; they had come because Shinra was worried about losing a valuable resources and a considerable workforce when the place burned to the ground. Veld had found her and delivered her as the sole witness, but he had come back while the medics tended to her. She had begged him to let her become a Turk as soon as she was recovered enough to know what one was. She had nothing left in Old Corel. Her old life was gone. Learning to fight had given her back her self-confidence, turning her from a frightened little girl into a warrior with a new name and a new future. She had felt stronger after that. _Nobody_ messed with the Turks.

Except for this guy. Except Alejandro. Mad, bad, sad Alejandro, who had his own agenda. His outlook couldn't be quantified by the judgments of a sane person. She had fought him as a Turk and she had still lost. The black tar-pit of despair that had started with the loss of her family now threatened to overwhelm her totally, and this time Veld wasn't around with a new name to help her beat it back.

Footsteps. Hot breath on her neck,. She wanted to squirm, but she couldn't. Just breathing was an effort.

"Are you awake?" Alejandro asked. His voice caused her spine to turn to water. He could have said anything and achieved the same effect – 'pink candyfloss', 'cotton wool' or 'fluffy kitten'. It wasn't his tone, it was his whole voice. He had talked to her throughout everything he had done. His voice was bound up in her head with the memory of pain and humiliation. "Hellooo?"

She whimpered when he chucked under her chin. It was involuntary. His hand was empty, but what about the other one? It was always the other one. Sometimes it seemed like he had three hands, each dangerous and cruel.

At least he had left her head uncovered. They hadn't in Old Corel. Okay, so she could smell mostly blood and sweat, but it was better than musty hessian, and at least she could _see_. In Old Corel all she'd had was sound and touch. Either would have been bad enough, but both together, without sight to balance what her imagination conjured, had made her stomach churn and her rational mind huddle down in the corner of her head in denial. She had heard screaming and wet noises, but not understood them until it was her turn.

"Please," she whispered, to Alejandro and her memory. "Stop. Please just stop it …"

"Boss! Boss!"

"What is it, Hector?" Alejandro snapped.

"Boss, he's outsi–"

The roar of a motorcycle engine and the screech of tyres cut off the words. Naifu was dimly aware of smoke and the smell of burnt rubbed. Her neck was sore where Alejandro had squeezed it from behind, but she tried to raise her head. It felt like trying to lift a bowling bowl using a piece of wet noodle, but she recognised the new voice.

"Alejandro!"

"You came!" Alejandro sounded overjoyed. He clapped his hands like little kid at a toy drive. "You actually came!"

"Oh my God."

"Do you like it? It's all my own work."

He was holding her chin again, pinching her jaw between thumb and forefinger. Naifu tried to pull away, suddenly embarrassed. He had taken her jacket first, and then her shirt when the sticky shreds got in his way. He had laughed at her scars and mocked her appearance. Then he had dampened the jacket and claimed he was washing her free of blood, but used saltwater to make her new wounds burn. Shirt, jacket and other parts of her clothing that he had cut away lay in a soggy heap beneath her feet.

"You _bastard_!" Rod thundered.

"Look who's talking," Alejandro replied.

An engine gunned. Who had brought a vehicle into a slaughterhouse? How the hell had they even gotten it inside? "Let her go, Alejandro."

Alejandro laughed; a high-pitched, almost hysterical noise. "Even if I cut her down, do you think she can stand like this?"

"You know what I mean."

"Maybe. Maybe not. Maybe I like her too much to let her go. Maybe I wanna keep her. I always wanted a lil' pet to call my very own. She trembles just like a mouse, y'know. Not at first, but with the right incentive she shakes and shivers just right. Of course," he said silkily, "you'd know all about that. Shaking, shivering and trembling in the dead of night with you, right? Can't lie to me, bro. I know aaaall your dirty little secrets. Always did. Kept them every time; not that you appreciated it. You never appreciated your bro."

"You're not my bro."

"You're right. Bros share. Bros watch each other's backs. You haven't been much of a bro to me or the boys." Alejandro's voice turned hard and accusing. "You finally come to pay the piper, Rodriguez?"

"I've come to save my partner and put you in the ground."

Alejandro's grip on her jaw tightened. "Bad move, Rodriguez. I'm holding all the cards."

"You'd like to think that, wouldn't you? The thing is, Alejandro, you never held the cards. You always tipped your hand too early and got suckered. Every. Single. Time."

Alejandro started to speak again, but something slammed into him, knocking him away from her. Naifu wondered what was going on – until an explosion rocked the side of the room. She prised her eyes open, forcing herself to focus. They were gummed with dried blood and tears. He had made her cry. Bastard. Everything was a bit swimmy – she could have sworn there was a wall over there before.

There had been, but now it was a smoking pile of twisted metal and rubble. Someone stood between her and the blast, ready to protect her from shrapnel if it had come her way. She would have laughed if she could. Like shrapnel was going to make much difference to her now?

"Hey there, Sureshot."

_No. _She whimpered again. _Oh no. No, no, no ..._ Something touched her belly. Her entre midriff ached already, so the extra prickling barely registered. _Not him. Don't let him see me like this. Please don't let him see me like this._

"Legend!" Rod shouted. "Use Phoenix Down!"

"Like I didn't already think of that?" Legend muttered. "Hold on, Sureshot, I gotcha."

She made a soft sound, like a bird hitting a windshield, as the pressure on her wrists and ankles gave way and she toppled forward. It turned into a cry as Legend caught her. Fresh agony flared from her cuts. She knew Alejandro had carved words across her stomach, but long before he finished she was too far gone to decipher them upside down. He hadn't let her pass out at any point. Scummy bastard. Somewhere on her arm was a tiny hole where the hypodermic had gone in, injecting a concoction to keep her awake and hurting. Maybe there was more than one. A lot of the past hours were indistinct.

"Loos …" she tried to say. "Loosiii …"

"Hang on." Legend cursed with a vehemence that would have taken chrome off steel. "I'll get you outta here. You just hang on, okay?"

She concentrated. "Loosich." Damn it! Her mouth refused to work right. She sounded out the word laboriously, feeling like a child waving a sippy cup when it didn't know the word for 'thirsty'. "Lu … cid."

"Fuck!" Legend swore. "He gave you Lucid?"

_Amongst other things._

Alejandro giggled loudly.

"Legend, watch out. He's not down!"

"Miserable little –" Legend didn't finish. He ducked, letting something silvery fly over his head, spinning end over end. "A cleaver? Seriously?" He sounded furious and a little disdainful. He flung out one hand. Naifu didn't see anything leave it, but rapid-fire pops told her he had thrown explosives. Alejandro shrieked in what might have been pain.

"Get her outta here!" Rod yelled. "I'll take care of this. It's me he wants, anyhow. Ain't that right, Alejandro?"

Naifu resisted, but only in her head. The orders never made it to the rest of her body. Legend gathered her into his arms like a rag doll. A rush of conflicting signals washed over her disordered pain and pleasure receptors. She whimpered. It wasn't all to do with the physical. She felt utterly humiliated. Was this how Alejandro felt whenever he was used? She hated him and feared him, but she could also understand him, which made everything ten times worse. How were you supposed to hate a victim? Everything was so screwed up in her head.

"Fucktard," Legend hissed, so vehement she wondered why he even needed the bombs. He could set the room alight with just his tone of voice.

"B-back … acha …" she slurred.

"He's the fucktard. You're a wise-ass."

She wanted to smile, she really did; she just couldn't. It wasn't fair. She had come so far, worked so hard, but in the end she had been sent back right to the start, and not even by someone she'd pissed off on her own merits. This was Rod's fight. She had just been dragged into it because he was her partner –

_Rod!_ They couldn't leave him. It seemed perverse to worry about him when he was, in a way, responsible for her current circumstances – inasmuch as you could blame someone for being the target of a lunatic's vendetta. Could you blame someone for being a victim and causing you to become one too?

Victim. The role was following her. She went back to the other times she had been made helpless and vulnerable by violence. Costa del Sol and Old Corel stood head and shoulders above the rest. This time made it a triangle of matching but different victimhoods. The location and perpetrators may have changed, but it was still all about being made into an object. She was just a _thing_ they moved about and used, like a side of beef, or a table, or … or a lamp! Yeah, Naifu the lamp. Naifu the soft furnishing. Naifu the _tool_. Naifu the victim. Victim, victim, victim …

"I thought I told you to stay with me!" Legend said sharply. "Don't you dare pass out!"

She came back to herself. She had been drifting, finally. Minutes ago she would have welcomed it. Unconsciousness beckoned. "Fife miniz more …"

"C'mon, Sureshot. Don't –"

"S'not my name!" She struggled. She may have actually kicked out. It felt like she kicked something.

"Whoa!"

Suddenly it seemed important for him to know who she was under all her bravado and … what was another word for bravado? Ah, well, it didn't matter. Bravado covered it fine. It was a good word. Not like Naifu. Naifu was what she had chosen to call herself after Veld recruited her. It was a way of giving the world the finger and declaring she was her own person after it took away her identity with a hessian sack and a flick-knife. She had been just a faceless body to those bandits who had broken into her home, to be used and cast aside when they were done playing with her. Ha! Playing? Sick games. Sick, sick little games. They hadn't known her or her family: no prior connections, no vendettas, no grudges, just a bad case of Wrong-Place-Wrong-Time. The pointlessness of it made it worse. She wasn't even collateral in some bigger conflict. She had been an opportunistic distraction, like a game of tic-tac-toe or eye-spy on a long car journey. Her new name wasn't much of a pun, but it had appealed to her back then: Naifu the knife-thrower, who would never be made a victim again.

"M'name iz…" She stopped. She couldn't remember it. She couldn't remember her own _name_. The irony was delicious – she had spent so long trying to forget that now she wanted so remember she wasn't able to.

"Not really the time or place, Sureshot," Legend said. They were dipping and weaving. Was he running with her in his arms? Peculiar sensations ran up her sides and tingled across her skin. She wasn't even sure if she was still naked.

She hadn't been naked in Old Corel. The bag over her head counted as clothing, right? Her world had become just brown threads and shifting shadows, which darkened as men dragged them into the cellar. She knew they were men because of their voices and the way their stubbly chin dragged across her exposed belly and thighs, and the way two sets of calloused hands pulled her kicking ankles apart while a third laughed and –

No, no, no, that wasn't the memory she wanted back! She wanted her _name_, not the bastards who had made it so dirty she hadn't wanted it anymore.

Mad, bad, sad Alejandro. Poor, sore Alejandro. He knew what it was like to have someone force themselves on you. He should have known better than to put someone else through it. Or maybe that was why he had done it. He wanted to hurt her. He hated her. Or maybe he was just trying to feel like a real person again by making her feel less of one.

Information burst into her mind like a firework. "Adrianne," she cried out, far clearer than she had thought she could sound with her muscles all messed up and her nerve endings like burnt bacon all stuck to the skillet. She remembered her mother screaming it. It was the last thing she remembered of her mother. "My name – it's Adrianne!"

Something touched her stomach. Her whole world erupted in agony. She screamed, and it went on for what seemed like forever.


	38. Legend: Not Quite Rescuer

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><p><strong>38. Legend – Not Quite Rescuer<strong>

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><p>Legend tried to find the right balance between hurrying and not jolting Naifu too much. He had wrapped her in his jacket so brushing against him wouldn't reopen or open her wounds further. He had almost successfully applied Phoenix Down inside the building, but he had been interrupted before it absorbed properly and had opted to finish outside, away from Alejandro and his goons.<p>

"Don't you dare die on me, Sureshot," he swore as he carried her out.

Leaving took some fancy footwork and an assortment of explosives he had brought along for just this sort of thing – small enough not to mash the place with them still inside but effective enough to take out the enemy so they wouldn't get back up. Carrying Naifu made escape difficult, but not impossible. The fact he had blown through the wall to get inside in the first place at least meant they didn't have to go through corridors full of gangbangers to reach front door.

When they reached outside he headed for the end of the alley where he and Rod had parted ways. Naifu whimpered in his arms.

"Damn it."

They needed to get clear, but she was in such bad shape, she needed that Phoenix Down or she wouldn't _get_ any further. He fell into a half-crouch and fumbled for the feather, but her eyes, which had been scrunched in pain, suddenly snapped open. Her whole body arched and her voice rose in a desperate shriek.

"Adrienne!"

"What the-" Legend cursed as she nearly arched right out of his arms. "Whoa!"

"My name," she continued to yell. "It's Adrianne!"

"Hold still!"

She held that crazy arch for a second longer. Then her rigid limbs went loose. She collapsed back against him, eyes rolling up into her head.

"Oh no you don't."

Legend pulled aside the jacket to press the Phoenix Down to her midriff, where the fresh damage seemed worst. He knew about her scars – the wicked criss-crosses of old lacerations up and down her body, the round pink welts that could only be burns, and the cold fact that someone had cut off both her breasts and carved their initials into her stomach. He had seen all of it in Costa del Sol, so it didn't shock him now. The bleeding word 'whore' carved across her lower belly was new, however. He laid the soft gold feather against this, hoping it would heal away the whole thing before she ever had to see what it said.

He expected the Down to melt into her skin. He didn't expect her to rocket back to consciousness with a scream of pure agony. Naifu struggled, clawing at her stomach like she was trying to yank her kidneys out through her navel. She screamed again and again.

"Sureshot!" he yelled over her. "Naifu!" When she didn't respond, instead scratching fresh gouges into herself, he tried, "Adrienne!"

She froze and stared at him, eyes wide and jittery. "It h-hurts," she whispered. "S-so m-much …"

Legend's brain picked that moment to throw out a fact he should have realised three minutes earlier. Lucid messed up nerve endings for pleasure and pain. Phoenix Down was meant to relieve pain, but if the opposite was true here …

"Damn it all!"

She fisted a hand in his shirt. One of her fingernails was missing. It had been torn out at the root. The edges of the flesh where it should have been were blackened with dirt and dried blood. "You g-gotta save her."

"What?" Legend was confused.

"They t-took her first. She's in the cellar. They're a-all in the cellar." Naifu's pupils were pinpricks. Her voice slurred deliriously.

Had Alejandro kidnapped someone else? "Who is?"

"My m-mom." Tears spurted from Naifu's eyes. She was staring, but she wasn't seeing an alley, or even him. The cocktail of drugs Alejandro had loaded into her, along with the Phoenix Down, were reacting in what looked like a very bad trip. "You gotta save my m-mom. I can't see through the bag. They tied it too tight. My neck hurts. I can't breathe!" She raised a hand as if to claw her own throat like she had her belly, but Legend caught her wrist. "Make them stop. I can hear her screaming. She's calling me, but I c-can't … I can't get to her. Please, just make them stop." She shook her head. "Why isn't anyone coming to help us? I can't see the ones hurting my mom. I can't _see_!"

Legend's entire insides lurched. He didn't want to hear this. "Damn it, Sureshot; shut the hell up." He gathered her back into his arms and stood.

Something cracked against the back of his head and everything went black.


	39. Rod: Not Quite Betrayer

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><p><strong>39. Rod – Not Quite Betrayer<strong>

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><p>Rod was aware of people in his peripheral vision. So was Alejandro, apparently.<p>

"Stay back, boys!" he shouted. "This is between me and him."

Rod recognised faces, but not the looks of hatred twisting them. Had he really caused those? The Rage Riders had been angry at the world, hence their name, but not so hateful of it. There was pure malice in their expressions. Alejandro had chosen to join with a bigger gang, but apparently Rod's departure had prompted the decision, which landed him with a portion of the blame.

He shook off the thoughts. Visions of Naifu, strung up like a bloody side of meat, filled his mind. Whatever his personal culpabilities, she hadn't asked for that. Nobody asked to be slowly tortured that way. Until tonight, he never would have thought Alejandro capable of that kind of vindictiveness. Had he ever really known his friend at all? Or had he really caused this change in another person by his own selfish decisions?

"We all wanna piece of him," snarled a boy with hollow eyes and a recent, still-pink jagged scar across his forehead. Rod did a double-take. Was that Suarez? Since when did Suarez know how to handle a flick-knife like a pro?

"Leave off, Suarez," said another boy, confirming the identification. "Alejandro got the bigger claim. We all stay back," he added, raising his voice. "This is his fight."

Rod stared. "Javier?"

Whatever he said about staying out of the fight didn't stop the boy spitting at Rod's feet. "Oh, so _now_ you remember who we are?"

A chorus of insults rained down on Rod. Alejandro's expression became triumphant.

"Time to pay the piper," he crowed. "Time to pay the piper, _Rod_."

"Back atcha, _Al_. You hurt my partner. You got your own piper to pay."

"That whore?" Alejandro waved a knife, but not like a fighter. He was more like a conductor in front of an orchestra, jabbing and undulating to make them understand what he wanted them to know. "That was just … remuneration."

"Payback? I know. I got your note, you sicko."

Alejandro grinned. He was wild-eyed and blood-streaked. The knife in his hand was clean, freshly picked out of the line-up he had gathered for this event, but his clothes and face told the grisly tale of what he had been up to prior to Rod's arrival. "You and I, we got a score to settle. You abandoned us, Rodriguez. You sold us out so you could get in with Shinra."

"Oh, change the record. You think I screwed you over."

"We don't think!" Suarez yelled. "We know!"

"Can it!" Alejandro snapped. "But he's right. You did screw us over."

"And you fucked up my partner."

"You think that makes us even?" Alejandro laughed. "She just paid for her own crimes. Your debt is still owed."

"Her crimes? What the fuck are you talking about? She had nothing to do with anything. We just work together."

"Hm, yeah, she said that too. I didn't believe her, either." Alejandro pointed the knife at Rod, rotating it slowly from side to side. "You two cooked up a scheme together, but it won't work. It won't!"

A faint susurrus went around the circle. Rod risked a glance and caught the tail-end of a shared expression that told him what he needed to know: the Rage Riders, what was left of them, knew their erstwhile leader had gone off the deep end, but they felt responsible enough for his mental state that they wouldn't reprimand him for anything. Alejandro had put himself between them and a lot of bad things and bad people. That had earned him moral leeway in their books. They knew Rod and Naifu weren't lovers. Probably they hadn't wanted to see her tortured either, but they had let Alejandro carve her up because he was theirs, she wasn't, he was hurt and they wanted some kind of retribution to make him feel better. Naifu was collateral damage. Rod wasn't sure if that was better or worse than if they had actually hated her as much as they hated him.

Abruptly, against all expectation, Alejandro threw down the knife. It clattered to the floor. He raised both hands above his head, palms outward. If Rod had pulled a firearm at that moment, he had a clean shot – head, chest, knees, anything he wanted. Of course, ten seconds later he would be fighting his way out of a mob of very pissed off, armed gangbangers, but that was beside the point.

"Get off the bike," Alejandro ordered.

Rod responded by hunkering lower over the handlebars, like a dog growling over a bone. He had brought the bike in case it was possible to grab Naifu and make a quick getaway. That option was gone now, but he was still reluctant to give up the motorcycle. It was a bike that had tempted him and started this whole thing. It seemed fitting that one be here at the end too.

"Get off the bike and fight me like a man," Alejandro said. "No weapons, nobody else, just fists, you and me."

"Why the hell should I trust you?" Rod demanded.

"You mean like I trusted you?" Alejandro started unbuttoning his jacket. He threw it to the floor and yanked his tee-shirt over his head. His bare torso was far more scarred than Rod remembered, studded all over with odd shapes that told stories without words. Rod also saw the numerous needle-marks and flicked his gaze away. "See?" Alejandro insisted. "No weapons." He took off his shoes and socks, shaking each to prove there was nothing extra in them; no knives, no shivs, no firearms, nothing. When he made to undo his belt, Rod stopped him.

"You really wanna do this old-school?" he said.

"Only way to be sure it ends, man." Alejandro's eyes glittered. "One way or another, it ends tonight."

The statement was so close to the one Rod himself had made earlier tonight, a shiver went through him. "I need confirmation you ain't gonna pull a fast one on me." He looked around. "Any of you."

Alejandro nodded. "Boys?"

One by one, they put down their weapons and stepped back to the walls. Two peeled off and headed for the exits, presumably to keep watch for intruders or any back-up they thought Rod might have brought with him. The note had said to come alone, which he had already negated by bringing Legend along, but it was obvious Legend hadn't come on Rod's behalf. He had been here for Naifu. Now she was out of the picture, Rod was on his own.

"One more condition."

Alejandro's expression flickered into annoyance, but he said, "Go on."

"The guy who came to get my partner; you leave them both alone. He ain't got nuthin' to do with this – I don't even like the bastard – and you already got your pound of flesh from her."

"I ain't sure it added up to a full pound, but okay." Alejandro's expression solidified into malicious glee. "Although there were times I added some flesh to her instead of taking it away." He rocked his hips back and forth suggestively. "I really don't get what you saw in her. Oh, wait, yes I do: yourself." He howled at his own joke.

Slowly, showing no hint of the anger and disgust churning up his belly, Rod got off the bike and wheeled it out of the way. He removed his jacket and tie but not his shirt. The fabric was thin enough for the lack of weapons beneath to be obvious. Even slower, he placed his trademark weapon aside. It wasn't that he couldn't fight without the rod, just that he preferred the security of it in his hand. Only an idiot thought going without a weapon made you worth more than everyone else, and idiots died quick on the streets.

"Gone all classy on us," Alejandro mocked. He pointed. "Footwear off. No shivs for you."

Rod obliged. "You want I should moon you to show I ain't concealing no more weapons?"

Alejandro raised an eyebrow. "An offer you shoulda made a long time ago. Too late now. You got your Shinra whore now." He sniggered. "What's left of her."

It was as if someone had rung a bell. Rod and Alejandro circled each other like wolves. Rod half expected the other Rage Riders to whoop and holler, but they were deathly silent. There was more to this than a simple fistfight. They held themselves absolutely motionless, while he and Alejandro moved like stalking predators.

Alejandro gave in first. He had set up this elaborate scheme, but he had no patience now it came down to the wire. Using darting, fast movements, he feinted to Rod's left but struck to the right. Rod blocked it easily with his forearm and gave as good as he got. Both men fell back, undaunted. Alejandro came at Rod again, this time with a series of jabs followed by a kick that actually moved him sideways a couple of inches when he blocked it.

"You've been practising," Rod grunted.

"I learned a lot since you left," Alejandro growled.

"You learn how to protect your blind spot?"

Rod took the offensive so fast he was a blur. He swung and Alejandro ducked without thinking, which left him open for the kick Rod had been planning all along. The blow struck mid-thigh, eliciting a moan. Rod thought it was of pain, but in a second he realised Alejandro had moaned with pleasure.

"Feels _good_! C'mon, bro. Is that the best you got?" Alejandro was dragging his leg. The strike had numbed it, but you wouldn't have been able to tell from the way he acted. "C'mon. Come _on_!"

Rod stared. "Be careful what you wish for."

The fight went on in earnest. No matter how many hits Rod got in, nothing seemed to faze Alejandro. Instead, he seemed to gain strength from his injuries, which was more than a little disturbing. He also got in a few good hits of his own. At one point, Rod punched him square in the jaw. While Alejandro fell back he used his own momentum to land a perfect snap-kick in Rod's stomach, lifting him off his feet with inhuman power. Rod was launched into the air and hit the wall upside down. He slid onto his hands and executed a somersault that took him back to where he started, albeit with bruised ribs and a ringing in his ears.

"Whoops," Alejandro said insincerely. "Is it all a bit much for the lil' Shinra lapdog? You've gone soft, Rodriguez."

"And you've gone crazy."

"Crazy?" He pantomimed deep thought. "Maybe a little. And hey, guess what? Guess whose fault that is?" He rammed into Rod, surprising him and knocking him back with the unexpected clumsiness of the move. "That's your fault too! Crazy situations make for crazy consequences and crazy people."

"Bite me."

"You wish."

They grappled. Rod took a blow to the back of the head that had him on his knees. Alejandro took both heels to the chest as he tried to pounce and press his advantage. He crashed backwards, hitting the metal trolley with a clatter of tumbling metal and crunching bone. His injuries were bad, but not life-threatening. Rod used the impetus to turn the donkey-kick into another somersault. A moment later he was back on his feet and bringing one leg around in a kick that knocked Alejandro to the ground. Forgetting the finesse Youhei and Kakutou had beaten into him in sparring sessions at the gym, he landed on Alejandro and wrapped both hands around his throat.

The Rage Riders started to move.

Alejandro coughed, "No! Stay outta it!"

They halted, clearly not happy but willing to follow his commands.

Rod brought his face in close. "Maybe what I did was wrong, and I can own up to that. Yeah, maybe I owe you guys for not thinking ahead and predicting the future, but you took this revenge thing too far. Your beef was always with me. Naifu and Eber had nothing to do with it. None of the Turks had anything to do with it."

"They took you away from us," Alejandro wheezed. In a lower voice, one only Rod could hear, he added, "They took you away from _me_."

"I decided to go," Rod replied. "It was time for me to move on."

"And what were the rest of us supposed to do, you selfish bastard?" Javier called from the side-lines. His fingers twitched, but he made no move to join in the fight. "Just sit on our asses waiting to get picked off or picked up? You left us in the shitter and then shat on us some more, with your fancy new life, and your fancy new friends, and your fancy new job! You softened us up and then left us to die!"

"No!" Rod raised his head, fingers tightening convulsively. Alejandro's eyes started to roll. Rod stared at him, knew he should just hold tight until the shaking stopped, but he couldn't. Some part of him, buried deep, refused to let him finish his betrayals with this final crime. He loosened his grip, though he didn't give up his hold. Alejandro sucked in air. "I never meant for you to die, or get hurt, or none of that. I didn't think …"

"You didn't think what? That we were fucked without you? I g-got fucked without you," Alejandro stammered dazedly. "Over an' over an' over …"

Rod's stomach was doing backflips.

"Lucid made the hurt good," Alejandro went on haltingly, "but humiliation's the bitch that keeps biting. Public, that's what they liked. No problem doing it publicly." He laughed, croakily and without humour. "I'm a bitch, Rodriguez. You made me their bitch. Now I'm biting back."

Rod's gorge rose. He tasted bile. Alejandro was broken; completely and utterly _broken_. He hadn't meant it to happen this way. He hadn't meant for anything to happen this way. "No –"

"I would've done anything for y-you," Alejandro murmured, all flippancy gone from his voice. He sounded lost and scared, the way he had years ago when Rod first met him. Rod had been the strong one back then. Alejandro had echoed that strength, but like an echo, it vanished when the originator wasn't around. How had Rod forgotten that? "But you never saw. You n-never wanted to s-see it … or me … or anything you had. You j-just wanted the next big thing. For a while that was us. Leader of a gang – brilliant, right? Then it wasn't enough no more. You gave us hope, Rodriguez. We were nobodies, but you made us think we were worth something. Then you took it all away, because whatever we did, however hard we tried, we couldn't compete with Shinra. We weren't worth as much as those Turks. We weren't enough for you anymore. You didn't care what happened to us, because just … weren't … enough …" His eyes fluttered shut and his body went limp.

"Alejandro?" Rod shook him. "Shit!" Had the earlier injuries he had inflicted done more damage than he realised? It had been difficult to gauge, given Alejandro's reaction to them.

Alejandro hadn't bothered trying to prise Rod's hands free; not even when he was about to pass out. The reason now became clear, as he rammed home the scalpel he had palmed when he crashed into the trolley. The movement was fast as a striking snake and found its mark, sliding between two of Rod's ribs. The blade went deep, through skin and tissue to the vital organs within. Rod arched in sudden agony.

"The thing about revenge?" Alejandro whispered. "Too far ain't never far enough."

It was like being kicked by a chocobo. There was a frozen moment in which Rod's body registered that something foreign was inside him and that, actually, it really hurt. His brain fought to catch up with the signals it was being sent. He stared down at Alejandro as tiny bolts of pain radiated outward from the wound.

"Time to pay the piper, _bro._" Alejandro smiled and ripped the scalpel free. It trailed a plume of red liquid like he was trying to paint the air with a rainbow one colour at a time.

Rod's spine instinctively arched again against the white-hot agony. Alejandro kicked him off, reversing their positions within a handful of seconds. Now it was Rod pinned, gasping, as blood pooled underneath him and soaked the back of his shirt. His breathing sounded like someone trying to inflate a punctured balloon.

"You could've had it all. Could've had _everything_!" Alejandro laughed hysterically. "I didn't want it to be this way, but you left me no choice. You took away all my choices. This was inevitable, Rodriguez. From the moment you decided to take up with Shinra, this was inevitable. You had to know it. You're not dumb. You had to know it would come down to this – to you and me, same as it all started. Bug circle, right? Snake eating its own tale or some shit like that."

Rod's whole body felt like it was on fire. He couldn't breathe. His muscles trembled. Had the blade been coated with something, or was this him going into shock? Surely a regular wound wouldn't hurt this damn much. He had been cut and stabbed before, but nothing had burned like this. Greasy pain split him apart at the seams. His fingers and toes were already going numb. His face tingled like bugs were crawling under his skin.

The light of madness shone in Alejandro's eyes as he raised the scalpel for one last two-fisted stab. "It had to come down to this. That doesn't mean I wanted it this way. I tried to give you an out, Rodriguez! I tried, but you wouldn't take it! I'm sorry." He was laughing so much he was nearly crying. Or was he sobbing so much he was nearly laughing? "I'm so, so sorry!"

"Me too," Rod managed to rasp.

Before he could no longer feel his hands he contracted his stomach muscles. They had been sculpted by hours of gym training and hard work. His long torso bent, giving him the extra extension needed to reach up, grab Alejandro's face and twist. Alejandro's neck broke with a noise like biting into an apple. The scalpel fell from his suddenly nerveless fingers. He slumped forward, pinning Rod further under his weight. Perversely, the way his arms fell made it look like was embracing his killer and one-time friend.

Rod's vision swam. He was vaguely aware of the other Rage Riders crying out and running forward. Dark spots crept in at the corners of his eyes, as if his eyelashes had come to life and made a break for freedom through his eyeballs. The pain from his wound was all consuming.

And then suddenly it wasn't. Numbness enveloped him. His eyes shut, but he was in no position to register the switch from light to dark.

_I'm sorry,_ he thought fleetingly. He wasn't even sure to whom he was apologising. There were so many people whose lives had been screwed up by bad decisions and just plain being in the wrong place at the wrong time: Naifu, Alejandro, Eber, Carlito, Suarez, Javier, even Legend. Rod had never apologised for anything in his life. Weird how things turned out. _I'm so… so sorry …_

With his old gang baying around him, Rod's last breath ruffled Alejandro's bloody hair, and then they were both still.


	40. Naifu: Not Quite Dead

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><p><strong>40. Naifu – Not Quite Dead<strong>

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><p>She lay on her back. She could hear noises, but they didn't match what she knew was happening. She couldn't see. Her neck hurt, but not in the right way. The voices around her weren't saying the right things either.<p>

"Don't think you're leaving early, Turk."

"Yeah, you got special invitations to this party."

"Is the girl dead?"

"Gotta be. Alejandro cut her up pretty bad."

"Check her."

"You check her."

"I told you to do it."

"Look, you check her pulse while I take care of this guy."

Someone touched her. She didn't respond. They got off on begging for mercy. If she stayed silent, maybe they wouldn't take her to the cellar too.

"I can't tell if she's breathing."

"So check her _pulse_, dingis."

Someone groaned. The voice was familiar in a different way. Her conscious mind surfaced for a moment: she wasn't in Old Corel, she was in Midgar, and the injuries she could feel weren't the ones she expected to feel. Her mind was so mixed up that it hurt to think, but her body didn't hurt the same way. She couldn't understand the signals being sent to her brain. It would be so much easier to go to sleep and not wake up again.

"Shit, he's coming round!"

"After you hit him that hard? The guy must have a skull of steel!"

She forced herself to pay attention.

"Hit him again. Quick, hit him again! Use the pipe this time. It doesn't matter if he dies. Alejandro said it doesn't matter."

"But Shinra will…"

"Just do it before this guy wakes up and kills us!"

Shinra. Alejandro. Her brain roiled but these things stuck. Rod. Legend. And her …

"_Sureshot! Naifu! Adrienne!"_

Three names for one person.

_Me._

Her eyelids flickered. Shapes moved above her: two figures advancing on a prone form she recognised. Pieces of information welded together to form a coherent whole. The jigsaw didn't fit completely, but she melted off the corners and enough stuck for her to tell what was going on: Legend was going to die if someone didn't stop it from happening.

_Me._

Her mind snapped into a curious kind of focus. She rose, not needing to push or grapple her way to her feet. A suit jacket nearly slipped off her until she caught it and pushed her arms through the sleeves, buttoning up the front like it was perfectly normal to be covering your own nakedness in a slum alley, under the Plate, at night. Muscles that should have been too badly damaged to work somehow flowed into their natural movements. Her body moved with a clarity that was nothing to do with nature and everything to do with her unnaturally singing veins. The place where the Phoenix Down had touched her fizzed as it interacted with the drug cocktail. Pain didn't matter anymore. She didn't know how she moved from one position to another. It should have hurt but it didn't. She should have been incapacitated, but chemicals and sheer resolve drove her to do the impossible. She had lost people before because she was too scared and hurt to keep them from dying. Not again. Never again. Even if it broke her, she would _not_ let it happen again.

"Leave. Him. Alone."

The two figures turned. Both had tattoos across their cheekbones. More memories came to her: Carlito on the monorail platform, her knives, her suit, the Turks. She was a Turk. She wasn't a victim anymore.

_Time to stop acting like one._ The thought arrived in her head fully formed and strangely serene. She was angry but she didn't sound it, even to herself.

"I thought you said she was dead!"

"I thought she was! She looks like a fucking corpse, man!"

"Forget this guy – hit _her_!"

She focussed. They were kids. That didn't mean anything. She had been a kid when she was left for dead next to the bodies of her family. Being young didn't absolve you of things you did. If you were old enough to feel pain, you were old enough to know not to cause it in others.

"Bad idea," she said softly and moved.

She couldn't say how she did it. The whole experience felt like a dream. She was aware of mixed signals coming from her hands and feet. A few of her toes crunched, but nothing bad set fire to her nerve endings. Her ankles felt overstretched, but balanced just as smoothly as ever. Something sliced across her left hand during a palm-strike but she felt only satisfaction as she grabbed the knife and wrenched it away from the boy. Everything she should have felt simply dissolved like hot eater over ice. Afterwards she stood next to their crumpled bodies, her fingers dripping and something red running into her eyes.

"All that without my knives," she said. Her head tipped briefly to one side. "Hm." She turned and knelt beside Legend, gravel biting into her torn knees. "Legend. Hey, old man, wake up."

He stirred. His good eye opened blearily. "Sure … shot?"

"Close enough."

"How're you … y'shouldn't be able t'move …"

Her teeming bloodstream laughed at him. She just said, "We've got to save Rod."

"We … nuthin'. You gotta … nggh!" He sat up and gingerly felt his skull. "What the fuck hit me – a truck?"

She inclined her head at the bodies. "Took care of it."

He stared; first at them, then at her. He seemed to be having trouble accepting the information presented to him. "How? Crap on a raft, Sureshot, you were half _dead_! Now you'rerunning around beating the shit out of people? Your body ain't right yet. You can't put it through stuff like that so soon." His eye narrowed. "It's the Lucid, ain't it? It's got you all turned around, thinkin' you're superwoman when you're a heartbeat away from a toe-tag."

Whatever it was, it was making her feel great. She didn't even feel sorry for the little punks with their blank eyes and smashed up tattoos. Maybe this was the reason doctors always advised against mixing magic and drugs – the high was too addictive and empowering. She should be … should be …

_Hurt. In pain. Humiliated. Tortured. Violated. Dead._

She sucked in a breath. A flood of memories came back to her, each attached to those tattoos. Alejandro's manic laughter echoed through her head. She clutched her skull. After a moment she realised the noise wasn't just in her mind, but echoing out of the hole in the building Legend had made. She rose with the grace of a gymnast, still wearing his jacket. Yes, she realised, it was his jacket, not hers; but it was damp with new blood she had put on it.

"When this is all over," she said softly, "I owe you the cost of a dry-cleaning bill."

"Naifu – no!" Legend's words trailed behind her as she took off for the slaughterhouse, back to the place she should have been running _from_, if her rational mind would only listen. "Wait! Come back!"

But she was lost to the intoxication of her impossible, invincible but finite high.


	41. Legend: Not Quite a Hero

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><p><strong>41. Legend – Not Quite a Hero<strong>

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><p>Legend stumbled after Naifu. He couldn't believe this was happening. This was all kinds of surreal. He felt like he should be waking up with a killer hangover soon, except this kind of nightmare was too bad for any bender he had ever been on. Plus, this would be the first nightmare he had ever endured in surround sound, touch-tastic smell-o-vision.<p>

"Naifu!" he yelled as she darted like an acrobat over the rubble and back into the building he had just frigging rescued her from. "Fuckin' hell!"

His head throbbed and his stomach lurched as he got to his feet. He remembered the way her eyes had gleamed; irises huge, pupils just pinpricks. She was pushing her body past pain, past injury, past human endurance into total self-destruction. If he had known the Phoenix Down would react so badly with the combination of drugs Alejandro had injected into her, he never would have used it. Yet without the Phoenix Down, she may already be dead. At the very least she would never have made it back to Shinra.

_At this rate, neither of us will,_ he thought as he crested the rubble – just in time to see Rod, straddled by that sadistic freak Alejandro, reach up and snap the freak's neck like a toothpick. _Well I'll be a … he actually did it? _

Legend's admiration perished when Rod fell back. He didn't try to get up again. The spreading pool of blood was a big hint he wouldn't be trying anytime soon. So was Naifu's scream.

"_ROD_!"

And then suddenly there she was, vaulting over the heads of those in back, kicking and pirouetting her way to the front of the crowd. A couple of bodies fell as she passed; whether dead or unconscious, Legend couldn't tell. A half-dead girl in an ill-fitting suit jacket shouldn't have been threatening, but when she stood over Rod and Alejandro her growl almost turned Legend's bones to water. Blood dripped down her trembling legs, off her fingers and chin. Alejandro had cut off chunks of her hair, leaving ugly patches that just made her look even more demonic. When she bared her teeth they were red with her own bloody spittle.

"Back off," she snarled.

The remaining Rage Riders hesitated for only a moment. Then their wailing started up again. Half of them wanted to check on their leader – although anyone with half a brain could see he was dead. The other half wanted to avenge him, which meant getting at Rod. Since he wasn't looking too hearty either, that left Naifu firmly in their firing line. You couldn't reason with a mob.

"Idiot," Legend muttered. He reached for more of the tiny explosives he preferred when wanting to cover an exit without blowing everything and everyone to Kingdom Come.

Naifu crouched lower. "I said _back off_." She risked a glance behind her. She had a better view of Rod's upturned face than Legend did. When she turned back grief was written large across her own. "Don't you get it? It's over!"

"It ain't over," yelled a kid in front.

"They're both dead!" she shot back.

The crowd's muttering increased. They shifted uneasily from side to side, as if hearing the words made what their eyes saw real.

"What's gonna happen to us now?" demanded another.

"We're dead," shrieked a thin boy with concave cheeks. "We're deader than dead!"

"He killed him!" yelled a boy with a bright green Mohawk. "He killed Alejandro! He's gotta pay!"

"He already paid!" Naifu growled. "Are you blind as well as stupid?"

The muttering rose in pitch and the crowd's shifting took it forward a half-inch.

"It's your fault Rodriguez turned against us!" Mohawk shouted.

"Yeah, it's your fault!" yelled someone at the back.

"You got him to turn on us!"

"He never woulda left if not for you!"

"Yeah! Now we're gonna wake up with a bad case of _being dead_, and it's all your fault!"

"If the Red Rippers don't kill us, the Turks sure will."

"We ran outta Ripper HQ to come here tonight."

"I ain't going back there, man!"

"No way!"

"We did it for the boss."

"Alejandro's dead. How can he be dead? How is that even possible, man?"

"What's gonna happen to us now?"

"I _ain't_ going back there, man!"

Legend wanted to spit. These were the idiots who had orchestrated this whole mess? They hadn't even seen fit to plan ahead for what they would do after kidnapping a Turk, watching her be tortured and plotting to murder at least one other Shinra agent? Rod was dead and Naifu was … well, messed up, to put it lightly. What had they _thought_ would happen next? Had Alejandro really been so charismatic that they couldn't think for themselves without him? Or had the allure of revenge for troubles they perceived as someone else's fault been so powerful it had made them irrational?

Legend knew that sometimes life was just a shit-pile and there was nobody to blame or fish you out of it. He had pulled himself out of plenty. The Rage Riders, however, had loaded every single scrap of blame onto Rod. He was their scapegoat. Alejandro had sacrificed himself for their safety when they were absorbed into the Red Rippers, so of course he was above reproach, and _of course_ they weren't _at all _responsible for their own lives or fates. They had thrown in their lot to let someone else make their decisions for them, therefore when things went wrong it _had_ to be someone else's fault. There was no other explanation they were willing to swallow.

Now the one who had directed them, told them what to think and how to feel, plus the target for their frustration, were both gone, leaving them adrift in a purposeless sea with only the threat of punishment hanging over their heads. Legend wasn't brilliant at psychology, but even he could see that made for an incendiary situation. The Rage Riders were at an impasse: they had burned their bridges behind them, and he would bet his beach house that walking back into the flames wasn't an option they would even consider. To them, this had turned from vengeance into a last stand. Blazes of glory were messy things. They hurt and were rarely, actually, glorious.

Naifu's eyes and teeth glittered. She took up a ready stance, weight balanced on the balls of her feet, arms loose by her sides. His sleeves hung slightly over her hands, giving her a little-girl-lost look that was completely inappropriate – and undeserved.

"I don't care about a single one of you," she gritted. She looked from face to face with such intensity that her words actually made them look away. "None of you cared. You all stood by and watched what your great fucktard of a leader did to me. Where was all this shouting and screaming when I needed someone to save _me_, huh? You act like every bad thing happened against _you_; like the world owes _you _because you got bad breaks in life; like everybody else has to pay a debt _you're_ owed because you were unfortunate enough to get born in a bad place and not get out of it. Well let me tell you bunch of sickos something: _everybody_ gets bad breaks! That doesn't give you the right to blame someone else and hurt them until you feel better! All that does is make you as bad as the rest of the freaks and sickos who put you down all your lives! Why _should_ anyone care about you?"

It took a moment, but a thin voice piped up, "Alejandro cared about us!"

"And he's dead," she snapped. "So is Rod. Now you have to decide for yourselves: are you going to be cowards and followers forever, are you going to turn completely into bullies, or are you going to take control of your own lives for once and come up with your _own_ ideas for what comes next?"

The atmosphere seemed to be sucked right out of the room for a moment. Legend had a feeling like stepping off a steep top step onto an unseen staircase. Where the hell were those explosives? He was going to have to break out the nasty stuff if this turned ugly. Scratch that; uglier.

"We got no place else to go," said a skinny boy whose clothes seemed two sizes too big for him.

"We got no place to run," said a beefcake who was more man than boy.

"There ain't no way out of Midgar for people like us." Mohawk ran a hand through his hair, causing it to spike back up in an aggressive way that should have been impossible for a mere hairstyle. "Especially when Shinra finds out about this."

"Shinra already knows, dude," said Beefcake. "They _are_ Shinra." He gestured at Naifu, then behind him, which made a couple of heads turn to look directly at Legend.

"Fuck," he swore. If he threw any explosives Naifu would be separated from him entirely. He needed to get her out _now_.

"Shinra's gonna kill us anyway," Beefcake declared. "So why wait for them to send even more nasties in to take us out? I say we go our own way."

"Yeah!" Mohawk hunkered into a ready stance of his own. "Fuck 'em. Fuck 'em all."

"Fuck Shinra!" yelled Beefcake, stirring up those around him. "Fuck Shinra!"

"Fuck Shinra!" they chanted. "Rage Riders forever!"

"For Alejandro!" Mohawk ran forward, brandishing a baseball bat at Naifu.

She just grinned. "Bring it on."


	42. Naifu: Not Quite the End

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><p><strong>42. Naifu - Not Quite the End<strong>

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><p>Naifu's body moved without her needing to direct it. Her moves were less like fighting and more like … well, mathematics. If she put her knee here at the right moment, there would be a chin to intercept it. If she stuck out her left fist it would meet groin. Her right at a different angle would drive into a chest hard enough to crack ribs. If she curved her spine at a particular degree she could avoid the blade about to gut her and plant her hands on the ground to support herself while kicking hard enough to break the guy's neck. Everything slotted together in a pattern of blood, death, screams and deep satisfaction.<p>

She was vaguely aware of someone calling her name, but if she broke her concentration she would lose the pattern. With the attentiveness of a heroin addict heating a spoon, she followed each move to its conclusion, only to find a fresh pattern opening up from there. Her mind seemed able to see things in ways previously hidden to it. Just like she didn't question how her battered body was still moving, much less kicking ass, she didn't question how or why she could see the three-dimensional patterns. She just could.

Uppercut. Lunge. Block. Jab. Jab. Kick. Punch. Roundhouse. Jab. Jab. Jump. Turn. Donkey kick. Jab. Jab. Counter. Block. Head-butt. Jab. Jab.

"Naifu!" yelled the voice.

Kick. Punch. Leap. Jab. Jab. Block. Counter. Punch. Jab. Jab. Bend. Jump. Kick. Jab. Jab. Back kick. Elbow. Knee. Jab. Jab. Kick. Punch. Leap. Jab. Jab. Block. Counter. Punch. Jab. Jab.

"Naifu! Get outta there!"

She grabbed handfuls of hair, registered for a moment it was green, held the face beneath and twisted. She dropped that lifeless body and moved onto the next, turning her face to avoid the knife whistling at her cheek. She grabbed the wrist of the hand holding it, broke that with impossible ease and turned the nerveless grip upwards, closing her own hand around the fingers to steady the stab home into the attacker's own chest. She pulled the blade free and left him twitching, brandishing her new weapon proudly. She picked up another knife from another attacker and leapt back into the fray, hacking and slashing with deadly precision. Nobody could beat her with a blade. That was why she had renamed herself Naifu. The pun was a poor one but it had appealed to her back then. Like the other Turks could talk about weird names or nicknames? Just look at Rod with his rod, or Cissnei and whatever she was really called, or The Legendary –

"Naifu – gaaahh!" The shout became a pained yell that sliced through her concentration as well as she could slice through a throat.

She whirled, looking over the tops of those left to see Legend on his knees clutching his shoulder. Some bastard had come up behind him with a blade – probably trying to slit his throat but had fudged it. Nobody was good as her with a blade; especially when it came to throwing one. She didn't think; just went into the practised moves that had made her weapons an extension of her body all her Turk career. The knife buried itself in the forehead of Legend's attacker so hard and fast the guy was knocked straight on his back and tumbled out the big-ass hole in the wall.

Legend looked up. She met his good eye. He stared at her with pain and something she struggled to recognise through the red haze of battle. Every muscle in her zinged with energy and all her nerve endings were on fire. She was unstoppable. She was unbeatable. She was invincible.

But he wasn't. The realisation hit her like a slap to the face. These were stupid odds. Why wasn't he leaving? Because he was trying to get to her. Why was he trying to get to her? Because she was fighting stupid odds. Why did he even care? Because they were both Turks. Was that all there was to it? No, he actually cared about her.

Except that couldn't be right; Turks didn't cling; they didn't linger over death or each other. They all knew the dangers. She knew them, Legend knew them, Tseng knew them, Rod knew them –

Rod. Rod was dead. Alejandro killed him. Rod killed Alejandro. Rod was gone. She was supposed to move on. She was a Turk and Turks didn't cling or linger over death. So why was she fighting? Maybe she wasn't a good Turk after all. Maybe she was a crap Turk. Or maybe … maybe it just didn't matter anymore. Maybe there were other things that mattered more than … all this.

_They hurt me_, part of her thought frantically. _They made me a victim again._

Only if she let them. Alejandro was gone. He had received his punishment at Rod's hands. Her partner had avenged her. The backs of her eyes suddenly burned. Rod …

Legend continued to stare at her like they weren't surrounded by a baying mob of gangbangers with nothing left to lose. Naifu ducked and slashed, revelling in the potency of her own talents. She wasn't a victim. How could she even think that? She was tough. She was strong. She was way more than the girl she had been before Veld found her. She could fight back now where she couldn't back then. Victims had stuff happen to them and couldn't do anything about it. That wasn't her. She didn't have to be a victim anymore.

The cry bubbled up inside her. "Legend!" Someone lunged at her. She met what looked like a machete with her single little blade and still managed to turn it aside. "Legend!"

His one eye widened. He straightened and threw a handful of something at the crowd. Bodies went flying at the back of the group coming at her, sending the others into a panic. Talk about squashing a fly with a pick-up truck! She couldn't even see Legend through the smoke but she remembered where he had been, vaulted the head of a guy in front of her and handsprung her way towards the cloud of smoke.

"Legend! I'm coming! Hold on!"

A hand jabbed upwards. Before she could stop herself she stepped on the flick-knife it held. The blade went through her foot, halting her progress. She shuddered with the wrong-wrong-_wrong _pleasure that radiated outward from the wound, stumbled and fell between the bodies beneath her. Though she tried not to she landed on her back. The mob fell on her like a pack of hungry wolves.

For several minutes all she could see were hands and flashes of ceiling. Someone yanked her hair hard enough to drag her a few feet. She kicked out and clipped some chins but was stymied when Legend's jacket buttons went flying and something thunked against her stomach. She thought it might be a boot and struggled to get out from under it but couldn't. Nausea spread through her. Maybe she could vomit on them to make them let go.

_This is it,_ she thought wildly. _This is how I'm going to die._

Which was when all hell broke loose for a second time. Shots rang out. Those gang members who were left started yelling but she couldn't make out the words through the terrible pounding in her ears. The ones holding her scattered but started dropping before they got very far. One of them refused to abandon her, instead hunkering down with his knees either side of her chest, pinning her arms in place as he drew back a fist to smash her face. He rocketed off balance when a nun-chuck cracked against his head.

"What ho there, fair maiden," said the lanky blond smear her eyes couldn't properly bring into focus. "Richie to the rescue, eh? Now don't go hugging the fellow after I've beaned him; you don't know where the rotter's been."

Richie? Which meant the gunshots had to be Helena. Which meant back-up had finally arrived. Which meant it was over. Which meant she could stop now. Which meant … which meant … which meant …

"L-Legend," she stuttered, suddenly desperate to see him. He had to be okay; please say he was okay. She shoved aside the guy who had fallen on her and struggled to get up. She didn't care whether the bozo was dead or just unconscious; he weighed a ton and she needed to shift him so she could make sure she hadn't got Legend killed by making him come after her back into the lion's den. She would never forgive herself if she had caused anything to happen to him "Legend! Nggh – where are you?"

"Now there's a fine thank-you-very-much-Richie-for-saving-me."

"Richie," said Helena's familiar monotone. "Shut up and help her."

The dead weight was lifted off Naifu by two sets of helping hands. She sprang up – or tried to. It was more of a lurching stumble, to be honest. She looked around at the sea of devastation, searching for one figure in particular. She saw him after a moment, stumbling towards her with one arm clutched to his chest, leaving great splashes of blood where he walked. She blinked, still trying to focus. Where was his hand? The arm he clutched ended abruptly. Where was his damn _hand_? He stopped and stared at her but she was busy gazing at his missing limb.

"Y-Your hand," she stammered, having difficulty drawing breath. The nausea knocked around in her belly and throat as adrenaline leeched from her system, leaving a cold wash of reality in its wake. She was pretty much naked except for the open jacket, streaked in blood and gore and standing amidst a pile of bodies like some ancient spirit of war and violence. "Legend, I'm s-so s-sorry … your h-hand …"

Helena gasped. It was only a tiny inhalation, nothing Naifu would have heard if not for the silence and the fact that Helena didn't gasp at _anything_. Naifu looked and saw both Helena and Richie were focussed entirely on her, not the scene around them, though they surely had to have questions. Richie gagged a little.

"Naifu," Helena murmured. "Your stomach …"

Bewildered, Naifu looked down at herself – and at the large knife sticking out of her gut. She stared at it for several seconds, unable to understand what it was in the context of herself. She recognised it as something Alejandro had used on her before but couldn't understand what it was doing in her _now._ The wound itself was bleeding, ragged at the edges and so deep she could see slivers of pulsing pinkish-red things around the sides. She raised her gaze, still perplexed, but her knees chose that moment to buckle. Strong arms caught her. She though they belonged to Richie but Helena eased her to the floor, her own dark suit getting stained by all the blood on Naifu.

"Richie, your Phoenix Down," she snapped at her partner. "I already used mine on Legend."

"No!" Naifu struggled weakly, strength sapping from her muscles with every passing second. Where was all her manic energy going? She was killing people a few minutes ago; now she couldn't even stand up? What the hell? "Not Phoenix Down!"

"Hold still," said Helena.

"No!" Naifu pushed against the other woman, leaving bloody handprints on her face and neck. "Not again! Don't make me go through that again!"

"You have to –"

"NO!"

"Sureshot! Quit struggling!" Legend appeared in her peripheral vision and she immediately froze.

"Don't let them do that to me again," she begged him. "Please."

"Why doesn't she want to be healed?" Richie asked.

"They gave her Lucid. It does weird shit when combined with Phoenix Down."

"She's already been administered with a Phoenix Down since this started?" Helena asked sharply.

"Uh-huh. You're looking at the results."

She cursed under her breath.

"L-Legend," Naifu stuttered.

"I'm here, Sureshot."

She reached for him, then remembered his missing hand and let out a few curses of her own. "I'm … sorry."

"For what?"

"Your hand –"

"My choice," he said decisively, hiding the offending arm behind his back as if that would make her forget about it. "Forget about it."

The idiocy of his statement made her want to laugh and cry at the same time. "I'm sorry," she continued to apologise. Her vision was getting hazier and hazier. Someone touched her hair, smoothing what was left of it back off her face. She hoped it was him with his good hand. One good hand and one good eye; what was next, one good foot? One good ear? One good nostril? "I'm so sorry. I d-didn't mean to … to get you … h-hurt …"

"Part of the job, right? We all know the risks. Besides, it was worth it to come rescue you and get to play the hero for once. Makes a change in our line of work." His voice caught. "You did good, Suresh- Nai-… Adrienne."

"I like … Sureshot … better." Dark spots freckled her sight. She blinked rapidly but they didn't go. "Legend?" Genuine fear tinged her voice. She suddenly had something to say that was so urgent it burned her voice-box to be free.

"Yeah?"

"I … I wish …" She swallowed. The sides of her throat stuck together. "I l-liked … when you … kissed me … wish I c-could've … kissed y-you … again."

"Aw fuck, Sureshot."

"Maybe not … that far …" Her mouth curved upwards until she coughed and her whole body convulsed. Distant pain echoed the amount she should have been feeling, if not for the cocktail still in her veins. Small mercies were still mercies. "Le … Le …" She coughed and shuddered, splattering wet sticky blood onto her own chin. "Le …gen … d."

Then the darkness, held at bay for so long, finally caught up and claimed her.


	43. Legend: Not Quite a Turk (Anymore)

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><p><strong>43. Legend: Not Quite a Turk (Anymore)<strong>

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><p>Tseng approached cautiously. It wasn't apparent in his step or posture, but he was wary. Legend sat on the street corner being tended by a medic, though his entire bearing radiated disinterest. It was as if his arm wasn't even a part of him; like a bag he had been asked to hold for someone else while they were in the restroom.<p>

Tseng cleared his throat.

"Don't. Even." Legend didn't raise his voice or look up but the threat was clear.

"You need to file a report."

"I said," he growled, "Don't even."

"And I said you need to file a report." Tseng waited for him to lift his gaze but Legend continued to stare at the asphalt. "Only you know the full extent of what happened here." Legend was the sole survivor of the massacre. Richie and Helena had only been there for the last part and couldn't answer the crucial questions.

"Uh-huh."

"Is that all you have to say?"

"Uh-huh."

Tseng linked his hands behind his back. "I understand that you've been through a lot tonight–"

"You don't understand shit." Finally Legend looked up, revealing his single burning eye, brimming with grief and hatred. It was so unlike anything Tseng had ever seen from him before that he actually paused to process the sight, unable to summon a suitable response as fast as he usually would. Legend took the opportunity to get to his feet, pushing aside the medic. He swayed but also refused Tseng's help. "Fuck off!"

"Legend," Tseng said softly.

"I told you to fuck off!" Legend shouted.

"I know. The only reason you're not flat on your ass right now is because I am respecting your right to mourn. You lost two colleagues and your hand tonight. That's a lot for anyone to take."

"Colleagues?" Legend loosed a harsh, barking laugh. "Yeah, but we ain't just anyone, right? We're Turks. We're meant to be made of fucking _stone_, right? Turks don't care about death; just part of the job, yeah? Dish out some death before breakfast and bury a _colleague _before lunch. Fucking bullshit." He pulled his arm away from the medic who was still trying to tend it. "Fuck off already! Can't you people take a hint?"

The medic looked to Tseng for guidance. Tseng inclined his head, giving silent permission for the man to escape, which he did with all speed. In his wake Tseng stepped towards Legend, quite possibly risking life and limb by getting too close.

"You broke protocol by coming here alone tonight; you and Rod."

"And look where it got him. Or did you not notice his corpse when you did your walkthrough? He was under the gigantic pile of dead bodies."

Tseng didn't rise to the bait. "You know you'll have to face official reprisals for your decisions tonight."

"You actually think I care?" Legend's eye flashed white-hot. "I already faced my reprisals. I'm done, Tseng. I am _done_."

Tseng didn't react for a second. "No, you're not."

"Try to stop me." Legend waved the stump that had once been his hand. "I'm out. I'm done. This is me, being done." He whirled on his heel and made as if to walk away.

"Shinra will never let you be done."

The words were like a rope around his waist, dragging him back and holding him in place. He didn't turn back. "And you're Shinra," he said without so much as swivelling his head. "Tseng the perfect Turk. You gonna put me in the ground, Tseng? 'Cause that's the only way you're gonna stop me walking away right now."

"I don't want this to get ugly," Tseng said, quiet as salt sinking into snow.

"Newsflash; it already is."

"They won't let you leave like this."

"So you want me to just fall back into line and shut the fuck up?"

"I didn't say that."

"You didn't have to." Legend made to run his hand through his hair, froze and slowly looked up at his injury. He stayed that way for a long moment, staring at the evidence of the evening. As if he could have forgotten.

Tseng waited. Legend wasn't stupid. He had been a Turk for a long, long time; long enough to understand the inner workings of the job. Long enough to know that what Shinra wanted, Shinra got, and if Shinra didn't want you to leave, you didn't. You couldn't.

Finally Legend dropped both arms to his sides. They hung limply; defeated. "What the fuck do you want from me?" he asked, all the fire gone from his voice. "I don't have anything left to give."

"It's not me who wants something from you," Tseng replied.

"So what does _Shinra_ want from me? I … I can't do this anymore, Tseng." His head dipped forward, the slightest of tremors creeping into his tone. "I meant it: stick a fork in me 'cause I'm done. I just … can't deal with this shit anymore. It's too much. I've been here too many times. I've lost … I've lost more than I thought I'd ever care about and I've done it more than once. I can't do it again. Not anymore."

"You may think differently when you've had a chance to recover."

"No, I won't," Legend said with absolute certainty. "I already came back to the job once after it nearly finished me. I know what I'd be walking away from and what I'd be walking into. We can't be normal after doing this. Retirement isn't something we've ever factored into our futures. But you gotta understand: I'm no good anymore. I'd be a liability if I stick around."

Tseng nodded. "So not an active member."

"Why do I have to be a member at all? Cut me loose. You can do it; you got the power."

"Not that much."

"Is it really so much to ask?" Legend turned slowly and the raw emotion in his gaze was intolerable. Tseng knew in that moment that he had been telling the truth: he was no longer Turk material. Legend had broken like glass under too much pressure tonight and this job would not allow for him to be put back together. "Is freedom too much for us after the kind of shit we've done?"

Tseng didn't say anything. Instead, he looked at his watch. He still had to speak with Helena and Richie again to get a fuller account of what had happened. Helena had barely spoken when he got a brief rundown of the events leading up to his summons to this part of Midgar, so Richie had filled in the blanks while his partner stared blankly into space. Tseng had seen the carnage inside the old abattoir, including Naifu's body. Despite what Legend claimed, he wasn't made of stone. His stomach still threatened to embarrass him at just the memory.

"You'll be under house arrest in Costa Del Sol pending my official investigation into your conduct and breach of hierarchy tonight."

Legend stared. Comprehension dawned a half-second later. He got it. This was the best Tseng could do for him. The investigation would happen according to Tseng's timeline, nobody else's. Shinra would want to hush up this trouble, not draw attention to it. If Tseng could sweep it under the carpet they wouldn't question his methods any more than they usually did.

"Thanks," Legend said brusquely.

Tseng said nothing; just nodded and walked back into the bloodbath that had irrevocably altered his team.


	44. Cissnei: Undercover

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><p><strong>44. Cissnei: Undercover<strong>

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><p>Ted wasn't a great thinker. There was a running joke that cowpats had a higher IQ than him or his Pappy, which wasn't true, but what else could you say about a guy who literally shovelled shit for a living?<p>

More than you could say for the son who followed him into the 'family business', that was for sure.

Even so, when Ted first saw the woman, his slow brain speeded up, and he found himself wondering what someone so pretty and sophisticated was doing in a place like Ru-Raru.

She was in the town's sole bar, nursing a glass of something potent while simultaneously trying to disappear in plain view. Her forehead rested in her hand, her fingerless black gloves exactly the same colour as her short spiked hair. She looked like a used chimney brush from behind. When Ted approached and ordered a drink for himself and a refill for her, she raised eyes the colour of cola held up to the light.

"I'm fine," she said flatly. "Don't waste your money on me."

"Ain't a waste," Ted replied. "I wanna spend it."

"Then spend it on that pretty girl over there." She indicated with one finger, the rest clamped around her glass as she raised it to her lips. She shuddered as the taste ran through her. "Gaia, that's rough."

"You look like you could do with cheering up," Ted suggested. "And that girl ain't as pretty as you."

The woman's forehead crumpled back into her palm. "Damn it," she muttered, before draining her glass and walking out.

By the time Ted had jogged over to the door she'd vanished, but the memory of her lingered in his brain for the next three days. They didn't get many tourists in Ru-Raru. It was too far off the beaten track for casual visitors, and the population was so small that anyone who did come around was usually related to a resident. That woman, however, was neither tourist nor family visitor, Ted learned. Her cheerless, sombre eyes had looked so in need of a smile that Ted ached to find out what had made her come to town, and fix whatever was wrong. He found himself flipping back the bedclothes at four in the morning to go do chores, trying to tire himself into a blissfully dreamless sleep where her expression and his desire to change it couldn't follow.

On the third day he spotted her walking along the street, deliberate as you pleased. She looked different in daylight, although Ted couldn't tell whether this was a good or bad thing. Her eyebrows were the same colour as her short dark spikes now – flat matt black with no shine. The dye job was cheap but pretty good for that. If her eyelashes hadn't been a carroty colour to match her scattering of freckles, Ted might have missed it.

She saw him and her expression dropped even further, but she refused to look away as he approached. Instead she slowed and then stopped, so she could stand in front of him, feet apart, and glare up into his face. She was tiny, barely pushing five-two, her arms and legs like toothpicks to Ted. Unlike the local girls, who were all strong and burly, and moved that way, she was graceful, as though a strong puff of wind might just blow her away. Yet she stared at him with such fierce intensity that he immediately wanted to check for greens between his teeth.

"Don't get any funny ideas," she said. "I'm out of your league, sunshine."

He swallowed. "That a fact?"

"Even if it wasn't, I'm not playing the field right now."

"Playing the field?"

"I'm not answering the door to country bumpkins with bunches of flowers and flowery compliments. Get it?"

"Uh …"

She sighed. "I'm not interested in whatever it is you've got to offer, so don't bother offering it."

"Seems a mite premature. You don't even know me."

"I don't have to. I'm not interested. Stay away from me." Then she turned on her heel and tried to vanish again.

Thankfully it was harder in daylight, and he saw which way she went. She almost foxed him by vaulting a wall and shimmying up a drainpipe so she could skip across the rooftops, but he spotted her jumping down when her foot caught on a rain barrel and made a noise.

She was staying in one of the ramshackle houses on the fringe of town. Last year a pair of missionaries had bought the line of terraces, barely fit to live in and even worse than they were now, which was really saying something. The missionaries had done their best and set up a hostel of sorts. They'd gotten hold of the strange idea that there was a lot of domestic violence in Ru-Raru and wanted to provide a haven for battered women to retreat to. The first few months showed them this wasn't the case, but they'd persevered, eventually widening their base to include anyone who couldn't go home with a place for the night. Ted knew Batty Betty, the town vagrant, habitually stayed there when she wasn't kipping in fields or barns on the more far-flung farms.

The woman with the dyed hair didn't seem like a vagrant. She was too clean, though her clothes were old and probably second-hand. She went inside and Ted wondered whether it would be inappropriate for him to knock on the door. He was just trying to come up with a reasonable excuse for doing it when the roar of an engine cut the air. The hair on the back of his neck stood on end, and suddenly his most pressing concern changed to finding a place to hide. He was a big guy, and he hated fighting, but Cliff's gang equated 'big' with 'up for it' and always sought out the likeliest guy for a brawl when they came to town. It was their way of making sure everyone stayed scared enough to give them what they wanted without trouble – take out the strongest and you became the strongest yourself.

Too late. Ted was nearly away when the first motorcycles drew up in front of him, cutting off his escape. He tried to turn and go back the way he'd come, but the biggest hog ground to a halt in his path, and Cliff himself grinned across at him.

Some said Cliff was a looker once, before he got his first bike and rode off into the sunset to find as many mean bars as he could, so he could trounce as many mean guys as he could, and collect as many mean tattoos as he could. Cliff was 'mean' personified, from the clench of his fists to the look in his eye when he removed his sunglasses. Others said he'd turned mean after his daddy took his belt to him once too often and caught himself a bad case of being dead. Nobody knew for sure what had happened. The trauma of whatever it was had sent Cliff off the deep end. When he finally reached Ru-Raru on his travels he'd bulked out and bore little resemblance to the skinny kid he used to be. Somewhere along the way he'd acquired a gang of likeminded bikers – inasmuch as 'likeminded' meant they all liked to beat on folks and thought each town they visited owed them payment for _not_ smashing the place up.

"Yo, big guy," Cliff said in a friendly voice. "What's happening?"

Ted swallowed, not fooled for an instant. People called him stupid, but he wasn't. Not really. Not when it counted. "Nuthin' much."

"Really? That's too bad. Me and the boys, we're bored and looking for something to do. Figured we'd come into town to see if there's anything going on to take the edge off. Y'know how antsy a guy can get when he's been in a place a while?"

Ted had lived in Ru-Raru his whole life, so he hadn't a clue. "I guess."

"This town's a real dud on the entertainment front. The bar's crap, there ain't nothing even approaching a strip joint, or even an adult bookstore, and all the women are butt-fugly. I drive past all the damn fields and find myself checking to see whether what's in them are wearing skirts, just so I can tell whether I'm looking at cows or milkmaids." Cliff laughed. His gang laughed dutifully along with him, even though it wasn't that funny. "You're not laughing, big guy."

"Um …" Panic suffused Ted.

"You got any ideas what we could do for fun tonight?"

"Uh …"

"Examining your own navel seems to be the course of action for most folks." Cliff talked real strange. Sometimes he sounded rougher than sandpaper, as if he'd just crawled out of a gutter and was still spitting out garbage. Other times he used phrases that were far more highbrow. It was confusing, and made him all the more threatening even when he wasn't trying to be. An upper class guy who could not only succeed on the open road, but lead a contingent of its roughest patrons, was more dangerous than someone who'd never known anything but drinking, fighting and … well.

Ted tried to back away. He knew what was coming next.

"Hey, big guy, don't go. We were just getting to know each other." Cliff snapped out the kickstand of his bike and advanced on foot. There was nothing in his hands, but there didn't need to be. "Reckon I could take him, boys?"

"Sure you could, Cliff," said a ratty guy with a goatee.

"I dunno," Cliff said pensively. "He's as broad as I am tall. Might be difficult."

"Might be _fun_!" someone shouted, to a chorus of laughter.

Cliff waited for it to die down before speaking to Ted again. "Tell you what, big guy. To make it interesting, I'll let you get the first punch in."

"I-I don't -"

"Aw, c'mon. Here, I'll even shut my eyes so I won't see you coming."

Ted felt panic climbing his spine like a spooked cat up a tree.

"No?" Cliff shrugged. "Ah well. Can't say I didn't try to be fair, right boys?"

"You're a model of fairness and equines, Cliff," said a guy with a voice like a dump-truck spilling out gravel.

"Equines?" The ratty guy screwed up his nose in a rodenty expression that might have made Ted laugh under different circumstances. He could just imagine him with whiskers and a long pink tail stuffed into his biking leathers. "Ain't that horses?"

"I think he means equality."

"Oh. Right." Ratty guy nodded, but it was clear this word didn't mean much to him either.

The beating was short but brutal. Halfway through Ted could have sworn he heard a woman scream, but by that time the ringing in his ears was so bad he wouldn't have heard the triangle on his Granny's porch if it was right next to his head. About the only thing that got through was the sound of laughter and growling engines as Cliff and his gang roared away, and that was mostly vibrations the cheek he had pressed against the floor. He lay there in the middle of the street, wondering if anyone had seen what happened, and whether they'd admit it if they had. Ru-Raru was a miniscule town. It didn't even have a mayor, and the sheriff had been for show for so long before the bikers got here that nobody could even remember what half of his duties were anymore – including the man himself. The town had been easy pickings for anyone used to life at a faster pace than a crawl. People weren't just scared of Cliff and his boys; they were paralysed by the threat of them moseying into town to cause havoc.

Ted wasn't sure what happened next. He figured he must have passed out, because the next thing he knew his arm was curiously warm and there was someone talking beside him.

"You didn't help him!"

"Why would I?"

"I don't know. Basic human decency perhaps?"

A snort. Ted thought he maybe recognised the voice, but he couldn't be sure. "I never signed on to play champion of the oppressed and stupid. You're my mission, not him."

"How can you be so callous?"

"You have no idea."

Ted groaned.

"Damn it. Get back in the house."

"But I haven't finished -"

"In. The. House."

The warmth evaporated, and with it the cushioned feeling that had stopped Ted noticing quite how sharp the gravel was against his cheek. He pushed himself into a sitting position, flexing the arm he was pretty sure Cliff had dislocated when he rammed the fist high between Ted's own shoulder-blades. His head still rang, but not so loud as before. He stared up at folded arms and a wintry expression that looked wrong on such a pretty face.

"Didn't anyone ever teach you how to fight?"

Ted blinked. She sounded _accusing_. Wasn't she going to ask if he was okay?

"You just stood there and let that guy macramé your face."

"You were watching?"

"Better than TV." Sarcasm dripped off her words like honey off a knife over fresh toast. Ted's Mammy used to keep bees before she died.

He blushed at the thought of his mammy seeing him now, all blood-stained and dirty, with his clothes ripped from rolling around in the dust getting the crud kicked out of him. "It's worse if you fight back. Makes 'em go after more than just you."

The woman with the dyed hair squinted at him. "You're saying they hurt members of your family if you don't let them beat you half to death?"

"Not always. Sometimes they just go after your house." He shuddered to remember Winnie Westbrook's home ablaze after she ran out to slam her skillet against Cliff's head for whaling on her grandson. Winnie was spry for her age, but she'd only just made it out, and had lost everything in the fire. She'd been the example to make the rest of them play by Cliff's rules. "Or if you've got a store they break in and trash it. Steal the stock. That kinda thing."

"And nobody stops this?"

"Ain't nobody who can," he said, a trifle defensively. "We just gotta wait for them to move on and leave us alone so's we can get back to normal."

This far out, the big cities didn't care what happened to people. Small townships like Ru-Raru, of no interest to Shinra because it wasn't worth the expense of setting up mako reactors here, were self-governing for the most part. That was all fine and dandy, and created close-knit communities where everyone knew and helped out their neighbours, but only until extortionists like Cliff showed up with their protection rackets and itchy fists.

"_Can_ you fight?" the dyed-hair woman demanded.

"Not really."

"Figures." She sighed and shook her head. "I'm not a hero," she muttered, and Ted got the feeling he wasn't meant to pay attention to that part. "Nowhere in my contract does it say I'm a hero." She looked at him. "Get up."

He did so.

"Go home."

"But -"

"I said go home. You don't have a concussion."

"How do you know? You ain't checked -"

"Trust me, I know. No concussion for you. Now scram before you can add 'whupped by a girl' to your list of humiliations for today."

Ted was still reluctant to leave. "You're new in town. I don't think you understand -"

"Oh, I understand plenty. I've met pricks like that Cliff guy before. I know how they operate." She shook her head, eyes flashing. "Taking it to the families? I hate cowards like that. Not even … um, some guy I used to know, not even he … uh …" She looked frustrated. "Damn it, I am _not_ a hero."

"Uh -"

She cut her eyes at him, as if suddenly remembering he was there. "Scram already, will you? Get the lead out. Vamoose. Clear off. You're getting on my nerves."

Ted sucked up his nerve. "It ain't safe for a lil' lady to be left on her own in the middle of the street. Not with those guys around. I'll walk you home."

She boggled at him. "_You're_ going to protect _me_ to my door?"

Chastised, Ted nonetheless got to his feet and offered his arm like the gentleman his Pappy had raised after his Mammy passed on. The woman didn't accept it. She stalked away again in the direction of town. She was as different from his Mammy – from any woman he'd ever known, come to think of it. Different like shoofly pies were different than cow-pies. Ted watched her go, his temples throbbing. There was something strange about her movements, he saw now. Beneath that ballerina grace were muscles like liquid steel.

He turned to go himself, and could have sworn he saw another face at the window of the old hostel. When he looked again, however, it was gone, and for some reason he was even more uncertain about approaching the door now than he had been before.

Ted woke the next morning to his Pappy shaking his arm. "You gotta see this, boy."

"See what?"

"Just come lookit. I can barely believe it myself."

They were trussed in the town square, laid out like chickens in the butcher's window. Ted only just recognised Cliff under the mask of blood. The other bikers had fared slightly better – they, at least, all still had both ears intact – but they had clearly all been in a fight where they'd come off worst. They were all also terrified, and refused to say why.

"Said she'd come after us if we told a soul," Ratty said cryptically until the others silenced him with their glares.

Suspicion blossomed in Ted. As the other town members fussed about, throwing speculations like frisbees, he withdrew from the crowd. He already knew the gang was finished. They wouldn't be able to follow Cliff after this, if they even returned to the open road as they had before. Their rep was shot, and ninety percent of their world was reputation. There was always the chance they'd go back to their old ways to reclaim their rep – maybe even worse out of humiliation and retribution – but Ted doubted it. He'd seen their eyes. They'd been broken like ornery chocobos. He'd seen it in their faces. Something had spooked them good enough to clam up tighter than a glassblower's butt.

The hostel was empty. The missionaries were in one of the other houses, tending Batty Betty, but they didn't know anything about anyone from the end terrace.

"Nobody could live there. That one's full of dry rot. The floors are collapsing on the second floor. It's really dangerous. Even we never go in it if we can help it."

Which had made it perfect for anyone who needed a place to stay for a short time before moving on – especially if they wanted privacy.

Ted wondered what had driven the woman to the bar that day if she'd been hiding. The miserable curve of her back stuck in his head more than if he'd swallowed glue. Whoever she was, that woman had been the loneliest person he'd ever seen, or would ever see.

He never did see her again. Even if she'd come back with different hair, dressed smarter, or wearing something other than a pinched, haunted look, he would've recognised her. There was just something about her that wedged in his memory, and not just the fact he was convinced she'd had a hand in Cliff's comeuppance. Ted thought maybe it was the sadness in her eyes, which belied her tough talk, lethal-ballerina movements and fugitive haircut. The parts didn't cohere; the whole was lacking, as if the pieces added up but the answer got a big red cross put on it by the teacher, without any comment about how to change the wrong answer into the right one.

However, though he lived to see a giant meteor threaten the planet, survived Geostigma when he went travelling so he could see more of the world, and ended up writing several books about his experiences that really shut the traps of those who'd called him stupid, Ted never even caught a glimpse of her. Of all the things he regretted in life, for some reason that insignificant little thing topped the list.

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><p><strong><span>AN:**

**... Ru-Raru ...**

- Rough Japanese version of the word 'rural'.


	45. Zack: Fighter

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><p><strong>45. Zack: Fighter<strong>

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><p>Zack was losing himself. He could feel it. Pieces kept trying to work loose and skitter away. It was only through supreme self-control that he'd held on this long. There was only so much of being treated like an animal a person could take before he started acting the part.<p>

He fought, of course. He promised himself he'd keep fighting no matter what; but he could feel himself reducing down to his basic elements, shedding social norms and behaviours that only existed in the world outside the labs.

"I wonder if I'd know how to use a knife and fork anymore," he remarked to Cloud. "Or if I could fly a kite. Of course, I couldn't do that in the first place, but that's beside the point. If I could fly a helicopter, surely I could fly a kite. Right? Oh yeah, I forgot, helicopters are a no-go area with you, aren't they? You're the guy who _crashed _a chopper when we first met."

They'd been left alone and awake, which was unusual. Naturally Zack treated the development with suspicion, but didn't let on. As if Cloud cared whether or not he maintained his sunny disposition. Still, maybe it was like with people in comas, who couldn't respond but could still hear people talking to them. Or something.

"Crap, I'm cold. You'd think they'd at least spring for some clothes if they're going to leave us high and dry like this." Zack rubbed his arms, trying to restore warmth via friction. "I guess you think I'm a giant wuss, huh? Big tough SOLDIER can't even cope with a little chill. This is probably like summertime compared to Nibelheim, right buddy? Your stories of Winters in the mountains always made me wonder what it'd be like to spend Yule surrounded by snow, instead of trying to decorate a palm tree like we did in Gongaga -"

The door opened. Zack snapped to attention. Three white-coats came in, two of them wheeling a gurney. He wondered who it was meant for. The frightened looks on their faces said it was him. They weren't scared of Cloud fighting back, whereas Zack knew he'd hospitalised at least one scientist the last time they extracted him while he fully conscious.

"Hey, guys. Time for another fun day at the grindstone?"

"Shouldn't we sedate the specimen?" asked the man with salt-and-pepper hair. He sounded nervous. Good.

"The Professor wants it copus-mentus for the trial."

"It? _It? _Hey, dudes and dudettes, since you guys neglected to provide clothes, I think it's pretty obvious which gender I am."

The woman scientist sniffed. She had the drawn look of someone who habitually got so into her work she forgot to eat, and when she remembered lunch it was consumed over a sink or at her workstation. Hojo probably adored her. "Muscle relaxant, continually applied in small doses during transportation. It can recover remarkably quickly, so revitalization shouldn't be a problem." She tapped at a console and a whirring started up in the top of Zack's tube.

A compartment slid back. The glittering point of a needle appeared. No, not a needle, he realised, but a dart. There was no place for him to run and no way of shielding himself in the narrow cylinder. Talk about shooting fish in a barrel

"Aw shit."

He grabbed the first two darts out of the air in both hands, but the third hit home. Almost immediately he collapsed. There was a brief white-out when his head cracked against the glass, but it only lasted a second, and then he was boneless but awake in a crumpled and extremely uncomfortable – not mention embarrassing – heap on the bottom of his tube, like used coffee grounds nobody wanted. He was perfectly aware of what was going on, he just couldn't stop it as he was bundled out and away down yet another generic corridor.

_Well at least if they're concentrating on me, they're not trying to restore Cloud's consciousness by cutting pieces off him again_.

One of the only consolations of Cloud's vegetative state was the fact he wasn't aware of what Hojo and his goon squad did to him. At least, that was what Zack was trying to convince himself of, even if it conflicted with the reasoning that also had him talking incessantly to Cloud. He _had_ to balance the two impulses without trying to make them fit together, since he was excruciatingly aware of what happened to Cloud – and himself.

Zack was wheeled into a bare room and left there. The whoosh and click of a door told him all three jailers had vamoosed. Feeling came back into his limbs quickly, which also told him they hadn't set up an automatic dosage of muscle relaxant this time. He was still tied down, but a few experimental tugs revealed the restraints wouldn't stand in his way if he used SOLDIER strength. That, however, was what he suspected they wanted him to do. The word 'trap' bounced around his skull like an agitated grasshopper. He lay still, listening intently and planning what to do next.

"I know you're awake, Z." Hojo's voice echoed. Zack remembered shouting into caves outside Gongaga to get acoustics like that. He used to make his high voice sound deeper than the bottom of the ocean, and pretended he was a monster coming to eat the smaller kids who had followed him out of town. They'd been scared and delighted at the same time, begging him to do it again when they figured out it was him. "I know you can move. The drugs have worn off. Your vital readings are right in front of me."

The memories of Gongaga and his own childhood fortified Zack's sense of self, and his resilience. "We keep going over this. For a smart guy, you're pretty dumb. The name's _Zack_. Where are you?"

Hojo didn't laugh. He did, however, have a smile in his voice as he spoke. "Everywhere and nowhere. Rather godlike, wouldn't you say?"

"I'd say I want to know where you and your cameras are so I can flip the bird in the right direction."

Hojo tutted. "You really are an uncouth lout, aren't you? All that training, all that time invested by your mentor, all that money spent on your enhancements, and you yet remain a southern ruffian with the manners of a urinating carthorse."

"Careful, you might hurt my feelings." Job done, actually. There merest mention of Angeal was enough to raise Zack's hackles. An unmitigated asshole like Hojo had no right tainting Angeal's memory by mentioning him at a time like this. The knowledge that Hojo once had access to his mentor – had probably conducted tests on him, too, during mako treatments at the Midgar facility – made Zack's blood boil. He kept it hidden. There was no point showing Hojo where his buttons were. The sicko would just push them more. "Do I detect a hint of jealousy, Hojo? What's the matter – didn't they let you in on their fun? Did you want to be a SOLDIER and they wouldn't let a skinny geek like you take part in the other side of the programme? I'll bet you were shoved into your locker a lot in school, huh?"

Hojo's voice was beyond frosty. Ice ages were warmer. "You're wasting time, Z."

"I sense your male pride was injured by that snub. Did I hit a nerve?"

"Every second you waste is a second Specimen C comes closer to death."

Zack sat up so fast he didn't even hear the restraints snap. So much for not showing Hojo where his buttons were. The act was automatic, and it was only after the straps were dangling from his wrists that Zack realised it was the wrong thing to do. "What have you done with Cloud?"

"You really are quite attached to that boy, aren't you? One might infer all sorts of things from that."

"Where. Is. He?" All humour left Zack's voice. He knew it was ill-advised to let Hojo know he'd gotten to him, but damn it, if they hadn't figured out Cloud was important by now, they were even dumber than Zack had joked.

Expediency was key. They knew they could get to him through Cloud, and they used that to their advantage. Whatever their ultimate plan, Zack still didn't know, but he did know he'd been throwing spanner after spanner into the works by staying true to himself and fighting them at every turn. Hurting him to make him cooperate hadn't worked. Now they had graduated to emotional blackmail. Hurt Cloud and you hurt Zack. He would capitulate a lot more to protect Cloud than to protect himself.

Part of Zack was surprised they hadn't resorted to this before. The rest was just filled with fear at what this meant for Cloud. The poor guy couldn't fight back even if he wanted to. "What are you playing at, Hojo?"

"Go to the door in the far left corner of the room."

"Hojo -"

"Go or C dies."

Gritting his teeth, Zack did as he was told.

"Good boy."

"Fuck you."

Hojo sighed, but directed him down another corridor to an anteroom filled with SOLDIER uniforms, plus body armour and thick-soled standard black boots. The clothes were all hung on pegs and lined up in rows according to size. There were even balled-up socks, underwear and leather gloves in neat piles.

"Outfit yourself."

"What is this cr–?"

"Do it or C's head will be waiting for you when you return to your stasis pod. Minus the rest of him," Hojo added needlessly. Anyone would think he got off on rubbing salt in open wounds.

Zack's molars almost cracked. His jaw clenched. He had to keep his mouth shut. Despite what he'd said to Cloud less than half an hour ago, he remembered how to dress himself and did so speedily. It felt odd to have cloth against his skin again, especially the familiarity of a SOLDIER uniform.

The sensation just solidified how important it was to hold on to himself and not forget who he was. It would be much simpler to let go, but this tiny glimpse of his old life was enough to convince Zack that he couldn't give up. He wouldn't give Hojo the satisfaction. He would stay strong, and eventually they'd get out of here. How, he wasn't sure, but they would, and then he'd take Cloud … where? Not back to Nibelheim. Gongaga? Or … Midgar. Yeah, that would be their first port of call. Midgar was Shinra's stomping ground, but it was also where Aerith was. Aerith could heal Cloud; she could wake him up, make him all better, and Zack had to admit he just plain wanted to see her again.

_How long has it been? Is she still waiting for me to come back? _

Memories of her face, her laugh, her scent and that of her and her garden bullwhipped through his brain. He knew he'd missed her, but hadn't realised how much until that moment. His legs tried to buckle. He locked his knees. Not now. Much as it pained him, he shoved away thoughts of her and concentrated on the present.

"Arm yourself," said Hojo's disembodied voice. A door swung open onto a miniature armoury.

"What the hell is going on?" Zack muttered.

For once, Hojo seemed inclined to answer. "A test of your abilities and your loyalties, Z. How far would you go to protect C? He's a useless subject, valuable only as dog food as far as I'm concerned, but perhaps you can extend his life by means of task-completion exercises."

"You want me to do stuff for you, and in exchange you keep Cloud alive."

"Once again you boil things down to their crudest form. Haven't you chosen a weapon yet?"

It felt weird not having the Buster Sword. One of the broadswords leaning against the wall had to suffice. Zack swung it experimentally. It whickered through the air. He hoped he hadn't lost his touch. It had been a long time since he held a sword, and the last time hadn't exactly been his finest moment. He wasn't wearing a harness or scabbard, so he had to carry it as another door opened and Hojo 'encouraged' him to step through.

"What the f–"

The dragon was massive; easily bigger than a tank. Tusks the size of Zack's arm jutted from its lower jaw. It was restrained by means of a large metal collar and four thick chains pulled taut and attached to four metal posts stretched between floor and ceiling. If it tried to move it would strangle itself. As Zack comprehended just what he was looking at, the beast snarled and lunged at him, the snarl gurgling away into a choked noise as the collar tightened like a dog on a choke-chain leash. The restraints held, but only just.

Zack stepped backwards.

"Kill it."

He stopped. "What?"

"Kill it and Specimen C will be allowed to live."

Zack frowned. His expression changed to one of panic when a terrible clanging rent the air, and suddenly the chains disengaged from the walls and dropped to the ground, freeing the dragon. Even though it was weighted down by the collar and four trailing chains, that didn't reduce its speed. It lunged again, and Zack had to leap aside or be bitten in two.

The door had sealed. There was a barely a line in the wall to signify it had been there at all. Out here, too, there was no sign of any speakers, but Hojo's voice was as clear as water pouring into a glass.

"Time waits for no man, Z. Neither do I."

Zack's natural impulse was to do exactly the opposite of what Hojo wanted. A sliver of his brain demanded to know whether or not Cloud really was in danger before he complied with _anything _that bastard ordered, but he knew he couldn't take any chances. Cloud was as much Hojo's prisoner as Zack himself, and it wasn't just likely Hojo would carry out his threats if Zack didn't play along, it was inevitable. Zack recalled all the things Hojo and his team had done to their two captives already, and shuddered to think what new atrocities they could come up with under the guise of 'punishment'.

The dragon threw back its head and roared. Spittle trailed from its jaws, shining up its tusks like boots polished by an eager cadet. It pawed the ground and roared again, hunching its shoulders forward but not attacking. It seemed like it was trying to make itself look even bigger.

"_They're about to engage, sir. We should … we should leave. I mean, it would be advisable to retreat. Now."_

Zack blinked. The memory of the journey to Nibelheim was a strong one. He could practically feel the cold on his face and hear the snow crunching beneath his feet. Cloud could have been standing right beside him with that look he always got when he thought he was about to become human puree but didn't want to admit he was freaked, and Zack half expected Sephiroth to step in and take over pest control again. The pang that caused was swiftly driven away. Sephiroth was dead, and Cloud wouldn't be giving any more advice on how to deal with dragons unless he got strenuous medical treatment. He wouldn't even be forming facial expressions unless his mind recovered, and there was no guarantee of _that_ happening even if a doctor got a look at him.

Aerith. Distracting or not, the idea took root. Aerith wasn't a doctor, she was an Ancient, and everyone knew the old stories of how Ancients could do things normal humans couldn't. If he could get Cloud to Aerith, she'd be able to fix him. Everything would be okay, and not just for Cloud, either. If Zack could see her again, hold her in his arms, maybe he'd be able to forget what he'd been through in the labs and feel like a _person_ again.

"_They're displaying, sir. Intimidation tactics. They each try to make the other one back down like this, and if that doesn't work, they fight." _

This wasn't an Acid Dragon, but it was definitely displaying. Zack tried hard to remember what else Cloud had said about the best way to fight them.

"_It's always a fight to the death, and they get quite violent." _

"Damn -" Zack didn't get any further. The dragon, finished with its display, decided Zack wasn't backing down and so attacked in earnest. "You're not even to blame for this! You didn't ask to be here any more than I did."

One massive claw raked the ground where he'd been seconds before. The dragon hissed and unfurled large wings. They'd be useless for actual flight in here, but it swept them forward like an extra set of arms. Zack dodged left and then right, knowing instinctively that if one of those deceptively fragile membranes hit him, it could break bones. He advanced and then held back. He wasn't a cruel man, and the idea of killing an innocent animal just to please a madman with a microphone made him balk.

_I'm not his tool or plaything_, he thought furiously. _I'm Zack Fair, and I'm not going to be manipulated into becoming Hojo's personal killing machine –_

A strange noise reached him. It was so soft, barely more than a sigh, that it shouldn't have registered over the dragon, but somehow it seemed even louder than the roaring to Zack.

"I have just cut Specimen C's throat. Eliminate your target quickly, Z, and I will repair the damage. He may yet survive if you're fast enough."

Zack's grip on the broadsword tightened so much he had to remind himself not to buckle it with his strength. He had no doubts Hojo was telling the truth. "Sorry, buddy," he said with genuine regret, despite the fact the dragon was trying to kill him. It was reacting on instinct to protect itself.

Zack was trying to protect his best friend.

He rushed the creature. He was a blur of movement the dragon's eyes couldn't follow as he finally cut loose, aiming to finish this quickly. The leap at its head proved futile with those wings providing aerial cover. There would be no repeat of Sephiroth's technique here. The dragon tried to turn and bite him, but Zack brought his blade around in a low arc that slashed a gaping wound across its underbelly. Blood and noxious bile spilled onto the floor. As the dragon reared back in shock and pain, he whipped the sword up and drove it deep into the exposed throat. Seconds later it was all over.

Zack stood, a little breathless but otherwise barely winded by the exercise. It was amazing how skills he'd thought might be atrophied had come back to him when he needed them. He stared at the hand around the sword-hilt. Maybe there was still hope for him to function normally if – _when_ – he got out of here and returned to regular society.

"Well done, Z."

Zack spun, trying to locate the source of Hojo's voice. "Where's Cloud?"

"Right here."

The world blurred and Hojo's face materialised as if out of thin air. Something clicked and rattled close to Zack's ears and his scalp felt suddenly lighter, as if an iron band had been removed. The reality wasn't too far removed from that idea. Hojo was holding a VR helmet, of the kind Angeal used to make Zack practise with when he was still a cocky Second Class who would've gotten himself killed with his risk-taking in the field.

Zack suppressed a groan. The signals his body was sending his brain conflicted with what his eyes told him was going on. He wasn't in a blank room with the corpse of a dead dragon. He wasn't in SOLDIER uniform. He was in a tiny circle in the same lab as the tubes. Dozens of infinitesimal needles were inserted under his skin to mess with his sensory array and fool his body into believing it was somewhere else. When he moved, he felt cloth against his skin, when the reality was quite different. The sword in his hand was nothing but a wooden duplicate. It was tilted towards him so he could stare at it the way he'd been staring at the metal one only seconds ago, before Hojo brought him back to reality.

"Anything can be achieved with the proper motivation," Hojo said mildly to the white-coats behind him.

Zack shook himself. Whatever warped signals his nerves were getting, the fact remained that he was free, and he's bet his ass he was stronger than anyone else in this room. More desperate, too. The opportunity was too good to pass up. He strode forward, intending to use the wooden sword in ways it had never been designed to be used, until he caught sight of the figure pinned like a butterfly with outstretched wings against a nearby examination table.

Hojo had indeed cut Cloud's throat. The wound wasn't deep enough to kill instantly, especially someone with as much mako in him as Cloud did, but without proper treatment …

Hojo followed his gaze. "An unfortunate development brought on by your hesitancy. Shall we go over a ground rule or two? When given an order, you will comply immediately and without question. To do otherwise is to precipitate more damage to C. As I said before, C is a useless specimen in himself, but he does serve as a functional stimulus for _your_ development, Z." Zack had seen smiles like that before, on the sharks in the Costa del Sol Aquarium. "Your emotional attachment to him, which I initially thought of as detrimental to your progress, is in actuality quite auspicious. You will do as you are told, or C will suffer. You will not question what you are told to do, or C will suffer. You will not hesitate, or C will suffer. Disobey in any way and C will suffer. Are we clear?"

A sick feeling washed over Zack. The walls of his prison suddenly seemed a whole lot closer.

Hojo's hand twitched. It was a calculated move to make Zack look at it, and at the blood-stained scalpel held slack in his fingers. "Are we clear?" he asked again.

Zack resisted the urge to shut his eyes. He met Hojo's gaze squarely and defiantly. Oh yeah, they were clear. Zack swore a solemn promise in that moment to someday do to Hojo what he'd just done to that virtual dragon. "Crystal."


	46. Richie: Helper

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><p><strong>46. Richie: Helper<strong>

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><p>"Y'know, sometimes I just can't believe you. You come off as this completely untouchable ice-queen who'd bust the balls of anyone you caught breaking the rules, and then you pull a stunt like <em>this<em>." Richie draped himself over the back of the chair, watching numbers and complicated computer code scroll past. "How are you even reading all that? Are you getting mako injections on the side or something?"

"Shut up." Helena's voice was typically flat. If he wasn't her partner she probably would have shot him already.

"But I'm boooored." Richie dropped his face into the crook of his arm. Then he lifted it again. He hadn't washed his suit and it stank. Sometimes it was great rebelling against his rich-boy upbringing, but sometimes not. Personal hygiene was definitely becoming an issue. If he'd been partnered with anyone but Helena they probably would have told him so already.

He frowned in thought. Well, maybe not Rude. That guy was probably the only Turk who said _less_ than Helena. If Rude were ever partnered up with Helena the only communication would be grunts and the occasional ellipse. Freaky-deaky, as far as Richie was concerned. To prevent that travesty against conversation, Rude had ended up with Reno as his default partner on most missions, and Helena had landed herself chatterbox Richie and his nunchaku. One chatterbox and one silent sentinel. It was a tried and tested combo – although privately Richie thought he and Helena were streets ahead of their teammates.

_We even match more than Reno and Rude,_ he thought idly, comparing his blond hair with Helena's. More than once, with his sinuous figure and Helena's lack of curves, they'd been mistaken for each other – usually in a fight. Those who knew them knew better, but when bullets were flying and everything was chaos, their physical similarity had helped them confuse their opponents and stay alive. It had been a handy trick on several Shinra-authorised missions.

Unlike this one, which was most definitely _not_ authorised.

"You done yet?"

Helena didn't reply.

Richie wondered whether all this effort was worth it. Working off the clock, not getting paid (a major problem since Mummy and Daddy disowned him, declared him dead to them, and signed over his inheritance to his sister, who actually looked _less _like him than Helena, which was all sorts of bizarre, and where was he? Oh yeah), and breaking into a Shinra facility … all for what?

_That, my friends, is the million-gil question_.

Helena had tried to leave him behind on this – even gone so far as to sneak out of her apartment because she knew he suspected she was up to something and was lying in wait outside. Too bad for her Richie was more than just a pretty face. Too bad for most of the debutantes he'd bedded too, before he ran away to Midgar the way most kids run away to the circus. He still didn't regret that; just as he didn't regret tailing Helena and following her in.

"You know, if it hadn't been for me, you'd still be flummoxed by security." Richie grinned. There was a lot to be said for growing up in protected compounds where security was always top of the range and interesting stuff to do was almost nil. Keeping one step ahead of the latest innovations had been his hobby since he was knee-high to a grasshopper. "You could at least let me know what you're looking for."

"Shut up," Helena said again. If it hadn't been for the timbre of her voice, he could've sworn it was her daddy talking.

Richie had met the old guy only once and disliked him immensely. The man was as buttoned up as the collar on a military dress uniform and twice as stuffy, like he was on parade all the damn time. No wonder Helena came out of the Military Academy with the emotional range of an orthopaedic shoe. Except where her baby sister was concerned, of course. Richie smiled. He liked the brat just for ticking Helena off so much and proving there were actual emotions under her serious exterior.

The terminal beeped once. Helena's eyes widened briefly. For anyone else that would have been a volley of cursing.

"What?" Richie demanded. "What is it?"

She shut it down and stood. "We have to go."

"Aw, already? I was thinking about sprucing up this place a bit. A few ornaments, some new light fixtures, perhaps a water feature: it could be a tasteful getaway for the creative mind, instead of screaming 'bowels of industrial cesspit'. Honestly, you couldn't connect to the system _aboveground_?"

"Now," Helena said as if she hadn't heard him. She grabbed his shoulder and dragged him a few steps before he started running on his own.

"They caught onto you?"

"I was detected."

Mistress of understatement, as usual. Whatever Helena said, Richie had learned to maximise the actual severity to the power of ten. "Oh, bollocks."

The invective was well-deserved. They made it out, but just barely. Their Turk training was pushed to its limit in sneakiness. Their ability to remain undetectable in person and untraceable online, too. Helena was a good hacker. Richie trusted her to mask her presence in the Shinra system if she was poking about in places she wasn't supposed to go. If it was somewhere Turks didn't get access to, she was involved with some _really _serious shit. The trick now, however, was to hide themselves in real time as well, especially when people with guns were mobilised and sent after their skinny arses.

By the time they hit the streets below the Plate again Helena's pristine suit was in much the same condition as Richie's unwashed one. With her hair slightly mussed they really did look like twins, save for their wildly different facial expressions.

"Wow!" Richie crowed, grinning like a loon. "What a rush! When you break the rules, girl, you _break_ the _rules_."

Helena could have been carved from granite. "Go home." She started to walk away.

"What? No way!" Richie dashed after her. "Whatever you're doing, I'm now in it up to my neck. The least you can do is fill me in." He paused. Blinked. Stuck out his tongue. "On the _details_, I mean. Nothing else. Because, seriously, you and me? Not gonna happen." Not that Helena was unattractive or anything, with that blonde bob and blue eyes, not to mention that whole disciplinarian thing she had going on … he imagined her with a whip and thigh-high stiletto boots ...

Damn it, what was he talking about again?

Helena stepped around him. She had to practically leap over a pile of garbage to do it. When he moved to block her way his foot landed in a half-empty takeout box. "Ew, gross. Now see what you made me do?"

"Go home." Helena had a hand resting on the PDA in her jacket pocket and an even harder than usual look in her eyes.

With a speed that would have startled a striking snake and given lightning a nasty shock, Richie grabbed the PDA, bounded up a nearby fire escape and waved it over the edge as though he would throw it to the ground. "Start talking, Hels, or it goes bye-bye."

Helena didn't even bother to pause. She just drew her revolver and pointed it. He heard the click of the safety and hastily reassessed his options.

"Jeez Louise, sorry. I forgot you hate being called Hels, but does it really merit shooting me?"

"Give that back."

"Man, what piddled in your cocktail? Are you really Helena, or some kind of pod person? Because the Helena I've been working with for the past few years not only wouldn't be pointing her gun at me unless there was a _damn_ good reason for it, but wouldn't even be out here in Sector Eight, in the wee hours, having broken into a guarded Shinra facility to steal files or corrupt data or whatever." He sighed as if there _wasn't_ a bullet being targeted at his forehead. "Seriously, Hels, what's up?"

Her eyes narrowed. "I've told you not to call me that."

"Talk to me. Something's up. I want to help. I _am_ helping. Play fair, girl."

For a second her eyes were nothing but slits. Then she holstered her weapon. You could barely see the bulge of it under her tailored suit jacket. "Since when do Turks play fair?"

Richie grinned, vaulted over the edge of the fire escape and landed lightly in front of her. He held out the PDA for her to take. "Since the other players are Turks. The rest of the world can go screw itself as long as we're okay, right?"

Shockingly, Helena didn't answer straight away. Her eyes dropped and she stuffed the PDA into another pocket on the inside of her jacket this time. Richie wondered just how much a woman could hide on her person that way. The girls he'd known before becoming a Turk had all kept it to a minimum. Some hadn't even bothered with underwear!

"Oh boy, you really are in trouble, aren't you?"

She shot him The Look.

"Don't try that with me, Little Miss Sunshine. You _so_ don't have the moral high ground right now."

"Do we ever?"

He thought about that. "Sometimes. But not you, and not right now. Not until you start playing straight with me."

He'd always known it was a possibility – all Turks knew that they may have to take out allies someday if those allies turned on them – but he'd never thought it would be another Turk. He'd have eaten his own nose, snot and all, before even considering by-the-book Helena could turn rogue. He had his doubts about Cissnei, since she'd been 'deep undercover', as Tseng put it, for years with no word Richie had ever heard about. He supposed whatever mission she had was between her and the boss, and Tseng knew what he was doing. Helena, on the other hand, was definitely not working on Tseng's say-so, and that worried Richie. As in, a lot. Nunchaku versus revolver: who would win?

"Have you turned?"

Helena hesitated. Richie's blood froze.

"No."

He breathed a sigh of relief. "But Tseng doesn't know what you're up to?"

"Plausible deniability." Helena gave Riche a variation of The Look, this one more assessing. It had taken her a long time to accept him as a colleague of equal standing. His behaviour didn't help, but his conduct in the field went a long way towards convincing her, and his loyalty to the Turks clichéd it during the AVALANCHE crisis. You had to prove yourself to Helena, but once you had her respect you made damn sure you never lost it. She was a dependable, if taciturn ally, but a deadly enemy. "If he doesn't know he can't be blamed."

"Heidegger will still try. He'll say Tseng can't keep his people under control."

"Heidegger is an idiot."

Richie stared at Helena. Then he threw back his head and laughed. "Bloody hell! You're just full of surprises today." He gave her his most winsome smile. "So who's the lucky fellah?"

Helena's scowl could have been used to peel barnacles from the hulls of old oil tankers.

Richie was having none of it. "You're denying you're doing all this for a guy?"

Her scowl deepened. Richie felt like checking to make sure his hair wasn't beginning to smoulder.

"All right, all right, I won't ask his name. But I'm guessing you've been funnelling him information on the sly, and tonight you found out something big." He shoved his hands in his pockets with the laissez-faire posture of a public schoolboy. His foppish hairstyle completed the look: unthreatening, vaguely pretty in an effeminate way, the kind of guy who looked more likely to drink strawberry daiquiris in an upscale bar than break kneecaps for information. "Explain it to me, Hels. Explain to me how that isn't betraying the Turks' confidence and trust."

"He is someone within Shinra. And he has no intention of using the information for anything that would harm the company." As ever, Helena's formal language made her sound ever so slightly aristocratic. You'd never guess her family was born on the bottom rung and worked their way up to respect with a series of dazzling military careers.

"He told you that?" Richie shook his head. "And I thought you weren't that naïve."

"I have not told him anything. I have simply listened to his concerns and begun my own investigation."

That made a difference. Richie trusted Helena's word implicitly. If she said she hadn't passed on any information, he believed her. "But you're going to tell him what you found out tonight?"

"I do not know how much of what I discovered is true." She glanced at the palms of her hands, which Richie couldn't understand. She balled them into fists and lowered her arms to her sides. "If it is, then it would be … most harmful."

"To the company?"

"To begin with."

Richie's left eyebrow sprang for his hairline of its own accord. "Sounds serious."

"It is."

"What do you intend to do about it?"

"Investigate further."

"Naturally. I wouldn't have expected any less from you. Will this involve more B n' E? That's breaking and entering in layman's terms."

"I understand the vernacular."

Sometimes it was actually quite weird how the chips had fallen; their attitudes mismatching their backgrounds, and the pair of them different in so many unforeseen ways. Helena was so much poorer, but so much more _polite _than him. Or than he'd been, he reminded himself, thinking of his sister's swollen trust fund.

"You didn't answer my question."

"Perhaps." Helena hesitated. "But not in Midgar."

"Where?"

She fixed him with an assessing eye. "Nibelheim."

Richie covered his shock pretty well. Everyone knew that name, though they very rarely spoke it. The humiliation of the Nibelheim Incident had hit Shinra hard, and they'd hushed the story quickly, with the implication that anyone who tried to resurrect it would face serious consequences. There were rumours that a reporter and photographer who had attempted it went missing 'while on location' and had never been seen again. Even Tseng was sparing with his details, though every Turk worth their salt knew the official story was bogus. Nevertheless, that whole business was strictly off limits and not to be talked of even amongst themselves.

Richie sighed and linked his arms behind his head. Then he unlinked them with all due haste. Whew, weren't people meant to be immune to the smell of their own BO? "I have some vacation time saved. And I don't think you've _ever _had a vacation since you started working. I'm sure Tseng won't mind me taking mine now. He might even be glad, after the Noodle Incident." He grinned at the memory. He'd never seen Reno look impressed before that, or as pissed. He'd sworn vengeance, so maybe now was exactly the right time for Richie to absent himself from Midgar. "So what's our first move?"

You could have cut yourself on Helena's sharp look. "Our?"

"Of course. What, you thought I was bull-shitting before? I'm your partner, sweetheart. Partners don't let their partners go off half-cocked into situations they may not be able to handle alone if aforementioned situations are really as big as you're implying this one is." He pulled a face. "And partners don't let their partners use unintentional innuendoes or hideously long and rambling sentences all the time, either."

Helena stared at him. Then she bowed – the height of manners he'd done his best to forget since leaving his parents' mansion and the life they'd had planned for him. "Thank you."

Richie waved her off. "No biggie."

But it was a biggie, as both of them were soon to discover to their cost.


	47. Zack: Killer

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><p><strong>47. Zack: Killer<strong>

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><p>Zack resisted basic truths with all his strength. Call it denial if you wanted, but he called it survival. As long as he could preserve his sense of self and his hope, he could at least maintain his sanity and reason.<p>

For example, as he traipsed through yet another of Hojo's 'developmental tasks', he thought about one day seeing his home town again and worked on persuading himself it was actually possible. The kid who'd left at thirteen to be a SOLDIER had never wanted to go back, even for visits, but now Zack badly wanted to see Gongaga again. His house. His room. His posters on the walls and photographs stuffed into drawers and into books as markers. Dirty socks next to the bed and an array of only slightly pre-worn clothes scattered about, ready to be worn again. Intellectually he knew his mother would have cleaned up those clothes and reordered his things, if she and his father hadn't just converted his room into something else altogether, but when he thought of it, that was the image that came to mind.

Mom and Dad. They'd been okay parents, he could see that now. It couldn't have been easy, raising a kid as wild and adventurous as Zack had been. His mother had been driven to distraction by all the scrapes he got into, constantly worried he'd injure himself beyond repair and end up in a wheelchair, or worse. Zack had thought her too fussy, always getting into his face and trying to mollycoddle him. He'd felt stifled by her when she was only trying to show him affection. His father, by comparison, had been the stern disciplinarian, or at least he'd tried to be. Zack hadn't really learned how to follow orders until he joined Shinra. He wondered what his father would have thought if he'd seen his wayward son doing push-ups as punishment for being cheeky to his training officer.

Zack tried to focus on his parents' faces, but it was hard. Everything was a little hazy with time and trauma, but he knew now that they weren't nearly as bad as he'd believed when he skipped town and went off to find his destiny in a hypodermic filled with mako. He wished he could tell them that. He wished he could tell them they'd done a great job – a better one than he could have done, given the opportunity. He wished he could apologise for not being a better son when it counted.

He missed them.

He didn't want to die. Or forget them. Or forget himself.

Too bad Hojo only seemed interested in the first, and that one only under strict conditions.

The VR tasks had continued, interspersed with more physical experiments that crossed the line into full-blown torture more often than not. Sometimes Hojo or his minions asked him questions, or tried to convince him of things when his brain was too fogged with pain to resist. They were attempting to implant suggestions in his mind, he knew, but he could never remember _what _afterwards – which, actually, was the point of the exercise, and all the more terrifying for it. The idea they were succeeding in whatever they were trying to do to him was his greatest fear, next to them going too far and killing Cloud when they used him as a bargaining chip.

Most of the time, however, Hojo and his band of merry idiots said nothing. Then they put Zack back in his tube only long enough to make sure he didn't die before they took him out again. He wasn't induced into unconsciousness nearly so much anymore, so he had a better idea of real time. There was no point in knocking him out. The time between extractions was shorter than ever, a pattern designed to keep him disoriented and even more biddable. They deprived him of sleep, too. They were trying to break him, and it was getting more and more like taking a titanium cudgel to a walnut. Sometimes he couldn't tell reality from the evocative fantasies of the VR equipment, which fooled far more than just his eyes and hearing, the way the holo-chamber at Shinra used to.

He remembered sneaking Cloud into those chambers to help him practise his swordsmanship. He wondered whether Cloud would ever be Cloud again, even if they were ever freed. In Zack's hastily snatched sleep and even hastier dreams, he sometimes envisaged other SOLDIERs, ad sometimes even a few Turks, bursting into the lab and shutting down these 'terrible and illegal experiments that Shinra obviously didn't know about otherwise they would have stopped them a long time ago'.

Yeah, right. Shinra? Shit-ra, more like.

People swam before him as he lurched from task to task. Those he'd known and worked with, and those he'd only seen in pictures or at a distance. President Shinra. Rufus, the president's son. Godo Kisaragi of Wutai. Heidegger. Scarlet. Reeve Tuetsi. Their names loomed bigger than their faces, and clamoured against the more familiar ones Zack struggled to hold onto when his grip on his sanity seemed thinnest. Cloud Strife. Angeal Hewley. Aerith Gainsborough. General Sephiroth. Genesis Rhapsodos. Tseng. Kunsel. Cissnei. He needed those memories. They defined who and what he was: Zack Fair, SOLDIER First Class, friend, colleague, boyfriend, pupil …

"You're losing focus, Z."

Not Z. He wasn't just 'Specimen Z'.

Zack gritted his teeth. Another day, another VR session, another attempt to break him. _Fuck you, Hojo_.

"Target ahead. You know what to do, Z."

_Yeah, wring your scrawny neck. _

Hojo was silent for the rest of the journey. Zack left the 'compound' and emerged into a brilliant day on a snowy mountainside. Previous VR tasks had put him in the Midgar slums, a desert, a sinking ocean liner and an airship, amongst other locations. Each time his senses were fooled into believing what Zack knew to be false, so the crunch of snow and biting chill in the air were no comfort. He knew he wasn't really free, however briefly. These fantasies actually made his captivity worse, as they hammered home the fact he hadn't actually seen real sky or breathed outside air for years.

Movement ahead. Zack tensed. He pushed away his hatred and anger and exhaustion to focus only on the present moment, on combat, on surviving, and on the other life dependant on his success. If he screwed up, Cloud would be the one to suffer. He had already suffered enough just by being in the wrong place at the wrong time, and then having the guts to do what needed to be done with Sephiroth. Zack was muddled with exhaustion and pain from his old wounds, but he knew he couldn't let his mistakes cause his friend any more pain. As he dredged up old tracking skills, all Zack knew was the tension, the moment that stood between him and another accomplished task, and the brief reprieve that would bring him.

He interpreted the signals without conscious thought. He needed to rest. He needed to protect Cloud. And his SOLDIER honour. He needed to _rest_, damn it. No, he needed to push on. He had to do this, and then he could rest, secure in the knowledge that Cloud was safe. Until next time, at least. And the time after that. And the time after that. How long would this go on for? How long would he have to do these 'developmental tasks' before Hojo figured out they'd never break him to their will? Whatever they wanted of him, he –

More movement. A shout. The world devolved into a smear of flashing colour and light. Zack saw things, but it was as if part of him had suddenly switched off. Snow flew, first white and then red. There was a noise like biting into a fresh apple. Then everything fractured into something like a screensaver of tenuously connected memories. The apple in Angeal's hand when he told Zack that story. The apple tree burning in Banora. Aerith laughing and wondering if her church could grow a tree as well as flowers. The flower cart Zack built for her. Going out into the Midgar slums to sell roses. Chasing Genesis copies through the streets. Fighting alongside the Turks on their turf when the number of monsters was overwhelming. Seeing Cissnei fight for the first time. Going on a mission with Tseng. The helicopter crashing. A regular grunt taking his helmet off as they walked and talked through the snowy wastes. Snow. White snow. No, red … and then Zack fell back into his own head with a stomach-churning lurch.

He knew the moment his knees hit the ground that this wasn't just another VR simulation. No needles were designed to make him bring up the paste that passed as food around here. Plus, there was something about the sharpness of the smell that drove into him more than any other had since Hojo started this game: blood and gore and ohfuckwhathadhedone?

Two bodies. One was clearly already dead. His head sat a few feet away from the rest of him. The other … shit, the other was still _alive_. Zack scrambled towards it, wiping his mouth and trying to cradle her head and shoulders on his lap.

His lap. He was wearing _clothes_. And he hadn't been able to _tell_. He'd thought it was just another simulation. Just Hojo's toys once again messing with his mind.

What had these bastards _done_ to him? He had killed before, as part of SOLDIER, but no like this. Never like this. Never two unsuspecting people who couldn't … couldn't defend themselves … why did his arm hurt so much?

Damn it, he'd been _shot_?

Not quite so helpless then. But he hadn't been able to tell he'd been shot when it happened, either. He'd been so disconnected from reality that he'd managed to take out both of these armed people without remembering a damn thing.

_No. No, no, no, they haven't won. No, this isn't… I'm not … _

Quick, damn it, what was his name? Z …. Z-something …

_Nonononononononono –_

"Zack Fair?" The woman in his lap coughed, eyes going round with pain and surprise. "You're … you're dead …"

Zack! That was his name. That was who he was.

He focussed on her face. High cheekbones. Short blonde hair. Eyes like two chips of ice. Something clicked; an old memory in the very back of his psyche, where the dust was thickest. "Reports of my demise have been greatly exaggerated, Helena."

"You're … alive …"

His arms tightened reflexively around the Turk. He'd only worked with her handful of times, but he'd found her commitment and loyalty admirable. What was she doing here? And where _was _here? Could he really still be in Nibelheim? Hadn't they been moved in all this time? More and more mind-fuckery. It heaped on him, heavy as lead. He was sinking under the weight of it. Nibelheim, the fire, Sephiroth, the experiments, Cloud – and now this. So much tragedy.

"I'm sorry. Fuck, I didn't mean to … they've done things to my head, Helena, I couldn't stop myself … I didn't know it was real. No, that's a stupid excuse … shit. Shitshitshit. I'm sorry." The words seemed hollow and useless, but they were all he had. "I'm so, so sorry."

Helena didn't reply. Her mouth was too full of blood. Still, she managed to face death with a strange kind of serenity, as if it would be too undignified to whimper, beg, or cast blame at him for what he'd done. She didn't offer forgiveness, or even castigation, but as the light went out of her eyes Zack read regret in them, and dozens of questions that would now never be answered.

She shuddered once and went still.

And Zack's mind, stretched thin as the depth of a shadow, broke.

He fell into a raging sea of memories, thoughts and emotions. Yet again he was swept away on a tide of images that disconnected him from reality. He felt like he'd been torn right out of his body and thrown into a void where all his worst nightmares waited for him. He was fighting Angeal to the death again. He was watching Cloud stagger out of the reactor with a fatal wound from Masamune. He was in Wutai during the war, discovering the poor men who'd fallen into a concealed spike pit. He was helplessly pounding his fist against the inside of his stasis tube while Hojo made his best friend scream in agony. He was in Banora when the choppers started dropping their explosives. He was running through the burning buildings of Nibelheim to save their young guide, Tifa. He was arriving at the church to find some drunken guy had Aerith pinned against the wall. He was looking down at Gillian Hewley's body. He was fighting Sephiroth, looking into the eyes of the man he'd respected for years and seeing nothing there but madness …

_Help! Angeal! Someone, help!_

He was failing. Over and over again, he was failing. He'd failed to save so many people he cared about – Angeal was only one of them. Angeal had been killed by his hand. Genesis was an enemy. Sephiroth was dead. Cloud's mind was lost. Tifa had probably died of the wounds Sephiroth gave her. Those men in Wutai had waited for him, but he'd been too late. Gillian Hewley had committed suicide. Banora was rubble. Nibelheim had been razed. He had murdered Helena and the man she was with – probably her partner, since Turks often ran in twos. The only one he couldn't be sure of was Aerith, and who knew what could have happened to her in the time he'd been gone? Another drunken attacker, perhaps, and he hadn't been there to pull him off this time. Or maybe Shinra had finally recaptured her and put her in a place like this. That was what they'd wanted for the last Ancient, wasn't it? Aerith had spent the first seven years of her life in a lab just like this one, and she'd survived. She'd made it through with her mind intact.

_Aerith, help me, please._

The thought was desperate and futile. He was sinking fast. Hojo had won. Despite everything he'd done to fight it, that bastard had won. He felt his mind slipping away from him, felt himself shutting down as he was drawn through the void … and drawn … and drawn … lulled into a kind of pit of hibernation, aware and yet unresponsive as images continued to pelt him.

Was this what had happened to Cloud? Was this what his best friend had been going through all this time, or was it really just acute mako poisoning? Did it really matter anymore?

And then, through the maelstrom, something twanged. He felt it. It was as though something buried deep inside him had suddenly pulled taut and was dragging him upwards like a fish on a line. He kicked feebly, but it continued to tug him out of the pit. It shone through and against everything, and the closer he got to the surface, the more it looked like a shining silver wire connecting him to somewhere in the outside world – the place he needed to be, because the pit was giving up and betraying his honour and his friends and loved ones, and if there was one thing he, Zack Fair, SOLDIER First Class would never give up, it was his honour or his precious people. Not now. Not ever.

For the second time that day, Zack tumbled back into his own head. This time, however, he saw the afterimages of the silver wire and felt it strengthening his mind against the things that had nearly shattered it.

Hojo was standing in front of him. Zack realised he was standing over Helena's cooling body. Until a few seconds ago he'd been staring blankly into space, much like Cloud, and decided to keep doing so when he heard Hojo speak.

"See how obediently he follows orders now? _That _is how you break a mind such as his." He chuckled. It was like the clatter of bones on a gamekeeper's gibbet. "It really was quite timely for those two Turks to come snooping around up here. Although …" He sucked in a breath between his teeth. "This does mean I shall have to return to Midgar to make sure they hadn't already communicated anything inauspicious back to that cretin, Tseng. Just because they were outside doesn't mean they hadn't already gathered things that could be used against the project. The Reunion must go forward, no matter what." Hojo sighed. "I do so hate politics, especially when one is faced with such success and yet much put celebrations on hold in order to deal with paper pushers and nosy administrators."

So Tseng was still alive. Something inside Zack cheered. Tseng was a bastard in his own way, but at least _he'd_ never stuck Zack in a tube and spent years torturing him into submission. And perhaps, if Tseng had sent spies to stake out this facility … did that mean rescue was on the horizon?

The silver wire twanged inside him. No, he couldn't rely on someone else to save him this time. He had to take matters into his own hands, and with this latest development he might actually have the opportunity to do it. Hojo thought he was broken. Perhaps Zack could use that to his advantage.

"Z, pick _that_ up," Hojo pointed at Helena, "and follow Gomi to dispose of it."

Dutifully, Zack picked up Helena's corpse. She was so light he could barely believe it. All the mako treatments here had made him stronger than ever.

"S-Sir?" stuttered the scientist called Gomi. "Me?"

"He's a blank slate now, Gomi. Give him an order and he'll follow it until we install the Project S programming." Hojo rubbed his hands together. He actually _rubbed his hands_ like some cartoon villain, and Zack got the impression it was nothing to do with the cold making all their breath visible in the air. "Go on. Try it."

Gomi licked his lips. "Um, Z … t-take three steps forward."

Zack complied.

"Now take three steps back."

He complied again.

"Drop what you're holding," shouted one of the others.

Whispering a silent apology, Zack allowed Helena's body to flop onto his feet. Her blood spattered onto his legs. He didn't react, though he wished he'd at least been able to close her eyes. They stared blankly up at him. Whoever said people looked peaceful in death was full of shit. There was nothing peaceful about dying, unless he was missing something important.

"It's working," said the woman who'd spoken. "He's completely obedient, and we don't even have to threaten Specimen C to get the desired result."

"Should I dispose of C now, Professor?" a third white-coat asked.

Zack noticed for the first time that they'd brought Cloud outside, presumably to provide extra incentive if he'd refused to kill Helena and her partner. Cloud was in his old infantryman uniform. The bloody tear Masamune made when it ran him through was still there. It was probably the only outfit they had for him in this place, if this lab really was in Nibelheim. Which would probably mean Zack was back in the SOLDIER uniform he'd been wearing when he fought Sephiroth and got his ass handed to him.

"No," Hojo said speculatively. "No, keep that one alive for now. That can be part of Z's final test when I return from Midgar."

"Sir?"

"Well what better way to prove the reliability of the treatment than to make Z kill what he has so foolishly been protecting all this time? That will also prove the effects of the treatment are long-term and aren't a – to use the vernacular – 'flash in the pan'." Another gibbet-chuckle, which the other scientists all mimicked dutifully. "Enough. Gomi, clean this mess up and then put Z and C back in their stasis tubes. Don't bother to undress them this time. Just make sure Z is recovered enough to withstand the programming after his final test."

As Zack followed Gomi with Helena in his arms again, and then went back to take her partner to the incinerator as well, Zack vowed that before Hojo got back from Midgar, he and Cloud would break out of this godforsaken hellhole. He had escaped oblivion this time, but he had no desire to try his luck again if it was discovered he _wasn't _as broken as he seemed.


	48. Cissnei: Reluctant

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><p><strong>48. Cissnei: Reluctant<strong>

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><p>Cissnei's phone hadn't rung in a long time. Not that she'd have been able to answer if it had, since it was somewhere at the bottom of a ravine outside Junon. She'd been travelling light for so long that even that miniature piece of technology would now feel like a needless extravagance. When you might need to grab everything and run at a moment's notice in the middle of the night, you couldn't be fiddling around with anything that might help the enemy track you, corner you, capture you, kill you, or all of the above.<p>

It actually seemed sort of weird now, how much she used to rely on a phone. Her PDA too. As a Turk in the field, especially when the field was Midgar, the ability to call for back-up was a must.

Not so much these days. She _was_ the back-up if they got in trouble. Scout, first line of defence, back-up, cavalry, plus everything in between. She was guide, survivalist, map-reader, head hitchhiker, bodyguard, sentry, and whatever else she needed to be depending on the situation. About the only thing she didn't need to be was a medic, since Aerith had that covered. Cissnei was glad for that. She could get pretty banged up and appreciated the respite while someone else took charge, especially if it happened in a way that meant she didn't have to feel guilty or ashamed about giving up control for a while. It was damn tiring being responsible for more than just yourself.

Years down the line, and still Aerith stuck to her belief that Zack was alive. Cissnei wasn't so sure anymore. After seeing some of the weird shit Aerith could do, she had faith in the power of the Ancients, but … after seeing some of the less impressive shit, Cissnei was also convinced Aerith wasn't an all-powerful super-being. She was human – crushingly so – and humans made mistakes. They were good at avoiding the truth, and at substituting what they wanted to be true for reality. Humans could convince themselves of a great many things – like a single man being able to survive four years locked away with the best Evil Fuckers With Scalpels ™ Shinra could manufacture.

Rule of thumb for being more human than Cetra: If you wanted it enough, you could persuade yourself anything was possible, even when logic tried to convince you otherwise.

Cissnei, on the other hand, was on the other end of the human scale. She was achingly cynical. She'd been out of contact with the Turks for a long time, and had no idea whether Zack really was still alive, but she doubted it. Her belief in Zack wasn't as strong as Aerith's, much as it galled her to admit it. Her desire to believe he could still be out there somewhere, still alive and _himself_, instead of a slab of tenderised meat with a pulse and nominal brain activity, was overridden by the inability to truth to blind faith that had often kept her alive in Midgar.

Big surprise there.

Aerith still managed to surprise Cissnei sometimes. Not just the Lifestream stuff, either – though that was weird enough. You'd never known true creepiness until you'd been cowering in a cave, a platoon of Shinra infantrymen overhead, your leg busted all to hell, and suddenly a pair of hands touched it out of the gloom, followed by a pair of big green eyes that sparkled like there really was a light behind them. Aerith had saved Cissnei's life before, which was an interesting experience. Being rescued by a civilian? And _thanking_ them for it? She could just imagine Helena's puckered brow and the remark she'd no doubt make about professionalism in the field.

No, Aerith's surprises came from more ordinary things. Cissnei, plucked from the orphanage as a kid, had grown up mean and strong, with the ability to hide both behind a deceptively innocent smile. Her female role models had been non-existent, and she'd been okay with that. Who wanted to be too ladylike, anyway? She'd learned at the orphanage that girls and effeminate boys were the ones predators came after. The bigger boys, the ones who knew how to fight, had always been left alone because they could take care of themselves. She'd longed for broad shoulders and biceps like ham-hocks, but instead grown up slender and delicate.

Demonstrating the cunning that had made Veld pick her out despite her age, she'd turned her femininity into a weapon. In practical footwear that made her even shorter, and straight seams that still showed just enough curve, she looked like a little girl playing dress-up even when she hit her twenties. Nobody expected her to be able to defend herself, and that supposition was always to her advantage. Even Zack had made that mistake when he first saw her. For Cissnei, being a woman was a cross between having an extra weapon and an inbuilt liability. She'd never been taught to respect women, let alone respect herself.

From the age of seven Aerith had grown up in the same city, but in a totally different atmosphere. She loved hemlines, flowers and being girly. She knew a different way of being strong, and whenever that showed up Cissnei was surprised, like she'd stepped on a rake in tall grass. Aerith wore her femininity like a badge of honour, as if it was a _good _thing to be dainty in a city that ate that kind of weakness for breakfast. She revelled in pastels and quiet charm, with splashes of humour that created giggles, not the raucous belly-laughs that greeted lewd jokes like Reno's.

Reno. Cissnei narrowed her eyes against the sun. Tseng. Helena. Rod. She ran through the names of the Turks she'd known and worked with. Naifu. Richie. Rude. Tan. Sandan. Tama. Kakutou. Youhei. Wabi. Legend. She wondered whether any of them were still alive anymore. A long time ago she'd realised that if Veld could be killed, anybody was fair game, but she hoped the line-up still included those she's been closest to. Turks generally only befriended other Turks, which was why her friendship with Zack had been out of the ordinary.

She hadn't gone near Midgar in all their travels, for obvious reasons. Tseng would probably have called it 'preserving the objective', but Cissnei called it common sense. There was no point in taking all these precautions for so long, only to throw it all away by getting too close to Shinra's hometown and getting picked up by a border patrol. Likewise, getting too close to active Mako Reactors was a no-no, which had severely limited their options after a while.

Cissnei took care over planning each next move. She had a stake in what happened now, after all – one forged in blood, sweat, tears and time, plus as many blisters as there were chocobos on the plains. Strangely, she wouldn't want to give it up if forced to choose, but she still wondered about Midgar. Midgar was a cesspit amongst cities, but still, it was the cesspit that had spawned her and she still felt some connection to it. She'd seen much nicer places in the last four years, places she wouldn't have minded living and had actually stayed at for several months at a time, but Midgar was in her blood and it didn't let go easily.

She wondered if word would ever come that they could come out of hiding. She missed … something. She used to think it was the thrill of being a Turk, but she'd had enough thrills and spills in the last four years to last her a lifetime, so that wasn't it. Maybe it was Midgar itself. Maybe it was something _in_ Midgar. Or maybe it was something that _wasn't_ in Midgar but which haunted it like a ghost comprised of her own memories.

Probably that was how they'd ended up staying so long in Mideel. While it wasn't exactly a bustling metropolis on the scale of Midgar, it was a built up area, and Cissnei needed that kind of connection to her past after months on a chocobo ranch with no neighbours for sixty miles in every direction. Aerith, on the other hand, seemed to like Mideel for the Lifestream she could sense just below the ground. She said it was closer to the surface here than anywhere else they'd been, and for some reason the fact it pleased Aerith please Cissnei too. More than once she had woken to find Aerith missing, only to locate her in the middle of a field, or a street, or at the edge of town with her palms held wide like she was greeting the dawn.

"Once upon a time I would've run straight to my superior with news of how you're a human douser for mako."

"Once upon a time, I'm sure you would've."

The end of that exchange – _But not anymore_ – had curled between them like a question mark, but remained unsaid. Maybe they were both a little afraid of the answer.

There were a lot of things they didn't talk about. After that initial blistering conversation about Zack, he had been discussed only a handful of times. Each occasion had started with Cissnei wanting to know whether or not Aerith thought he was still alive, and the most recent had ended with her scepticism and Aerith's stubbornness bringing them perilously close to an argument.

"You can't hold onto him forever, Aerith," Cissnei had said the last time as she curry-combed a chocobo rooster (her, on a chocobo! Reno would've laughed until he wet his pants), and staunchly refused to look up at the watching green eyes. Was she trying to convince the eyes or herself that it was finally time to let go?

"I already am holding onto part of him," Aerith had said. "I always will be."

"You know what I mean."

"And you know what_ I_ mean. I'm in too deep to swim ashore now, Cissnei."

"And I'm not?"

"I thought this was just another mission to you."

Maybe it had been, once. Maybe it still was. Worryingly, Cissnei wasn't sure anymore. Even more worryingly, she wasn't sure she cared. Midgar she missed – missed the grime and the noise and the _people_ most of all – but she didn't miss the parts of being a Turk that made places in her brain itch with the linked memory of Aerith talking about killers and killing. Her life now, such as it was, could never be described as exciting _all_ the time (mostly it was mundane chores cut through with infrequent periods of frantic action, which faded back to chores once the danger had passed. Who knew fleeing an evil corporation would involve so much trudging and worrying about where you were going to get groceries?) Still, it was … dare she even think it in the context of herself?

"Rewarding."

"Did you say something, Cissnei?"

"No."

Rewarding. The word tasted strange in her mouth. As did 'fulfilling', 'worthwhile' and 'meaningful' – all words she once upon a time associated with non-Turk things, but now associated with her own life. Who could have guessed that this long-term mission would turn out to be so … non-Turkish.

"Do you ever wish -?"

"No."

"You didn't even let me get the question out."

"No, I don't regret this assignment."

She did, however, regret not going after Zack, the way you regret things you know you can't change and probably never could've. She dreamed, sometimes, of finding wherever he was being kept these days (because no way would they not have moved him after all this time), storming the place and single-handedly rescuing him. Those dreams usually ended when she got to the part where she had to choose between returning him to Aerith, and bundling him onto the back of a motorcycle so she could ride off into the sunset and get her own happy ending. She knew she'd never do that to either of them, not after all these years of seeing Aerith wait for him with undimmed love in her eyes, but Cissnei's subconscious was just as selfish as it had ever been.

Other dreams were nightmares, as she imagined all the terrible things that could have happened to him in the past four years, or herself at one of Midgar's crematoriums as his corpse was reduced to ashes inside. Those dreams made her wake with a scream hovering on her lips, the way it used to when she got home from missions that had gone bad – where she'd ended up with more blood on her hands than even her flexible conscience could cope with.

Her only consolation was the promise Tseng had confessed to her about – the one Zack had extracted from him before he left for Nibelheim. Telling her had been more manipulation on Tseng's part, but on this occasion Cissnei hadn't minded. In a way it wasn't a promise to Zack at all, since Tseng had been looking out for Aerith for years before he even appeared on the scene, but articulating it had made it realer somehow – just like it had provided the final momentum behind her plans for how to go about accomplishing her new goal.

Was she going soft?

Probably.

Did she care?

A grey area.

The past four years had provided a peek into the kinds of lives she might have lived if she hadn't become a Turk. There had never been a more thorough version of 'looking at the roads left untraveled', since she'd travelled partway down a lot of them to keep Shinra from realising she and their prize were somewhere other than Midgar. Just because they hadn't realised Aerith was missing from the Sector Five slums didn't mean they couldn't figure it out if they saw her wandering around Junon, Rocket Town or Gongaga.

Yes, they'd been to Gongaga. The proximity to Gold Saucer had been an issue, but when they got closer the pull had been too much. The burned out Mako Reactor made the village low-priority to Shinra, so they had figured that as long as they didn't make it obvious who they were it wouldn't hurt to look in on the place. Naturally, nobody said _why _they wanted to go there; not even when they arrived and question the decision. Gongaga was a sad little town even though many years had passed since the disaster that decimated its population. Cissnei could see why Zack had wanted to leave. Old grief clung to the debris. Dreams died in Gongaga. They didn't start there.

Mideel was a place where life blossomed. Cissnei stood at the edge of town one night, even though Aerith hadn't gone wandering, and just looked at the stars. As a kid she hadn't even been able to see stars through the Plate.

She heard the footsteps, slow and measured. Someone was approaching and wanted her to know without startling her. She hadn't heard a chopper or a car, which meant this person had traipsed to town across the flatland outside. The tread was too heavy to be female, and the cough, when it came, was into a fist she remembered from sparring sessions many years ago.

"Hello, Cissnei."

She didn't lower her eyes from the sky. "Evening, Rude."

"You don't sound surprised to see me."

"Don't I?" She looked at him. "It _is_ the middle of the night. Maybe I'm just too tired to sound surprised. I could pretend, if you like."

He hadn't changed a bit. Still bald. Still brooding. Still … she almost laughed.

"You're wearing sunglasses."

"Yes?"

"At _night_."

"And?" He didn't say it defiantly, but with puzzlement, as if he genuinely couldn't understand what was so funny.

Cissnei shook her head. "Where's Reno?"

"Not here."

She raised an eyebrow. Then a thought struck her. Did that mean Reno was dead?

Rude evidently read her expression. She must have lost a lot of her skill at masking her expression with nobody as perceptive as him around to keep her practised. "He's still alive, but he's guarding the president's son at the moment with Sandan. This was a solo mission."

Cissnei imagined what Sandan would have had to say about _that_ detail. The daughter of a wealthy family, Sandan had fallen in love with hunting at a young age, rising to notoriety when she drove off several armed intruders, despite being bound and gagged, by firing a shotgun with her bare toes. She'd joined the Turks when her prowess with guns reached Veld's ears, though she sometimes got on his nerves with her love of showing off and her opinion that anything except the most dangerous missions was tedious time-killing and nothing more. Coupled with the fact that both she and Reno were about as serious as clowns in a custard pie factory when their personalities were allowed to bounce off each other's, wherever Rufus Shinra was right now, Cissnei was willing to bet chaos was a travelling companion.

"So Tseng sent you," Cissnei said, eyeballing Rude. They'd been in Mideel so long that she'd allowed her hair to grow out instead of constantly cutting it short, though she'd kept up the rest of her disguise's regalia. She looked terrible as a Goth, but at least it was a startling enough change from normal that an idle glance from the wrong person wouldn't give her away.

Rude just nodded an affirmative.

It struck Cissnei that she should be feeling more about being reunited with one of her old friends after so long. She couldn't expect Rude to be effusive, since that had never been his thing, but inside she felt curiously flat. She had a bad feeling about why he was here.

"How did you know where to find me?" she asked, playing for time.

"I didn't."

"So you've just been wandering from town to town on the off-chance I'd be there?"

He stared at her. Or at least he pointed his sunglasses in her direction. She assumed a stare accompanied it.

"I see you're as talkative as ever. You have your ways and you're not going to explain them to me, is that it?" She stuck her hands in her pockets and then realised a true Turk would never do that unless there was a weapon in there. All she had in her pockets were three boiled sweets and a pair of gloves. How very domestic. Rekka was folded into its travelling form and stored somewhere else. "Why are you here, Rude? You didn't make all this effort to find me just to gossip about old times."

Rude hadn't looked away at any point. "A test subject called Specimen Z broke out of a secret Shinra research facility near Mount Nibel. Specimen Z took another subject called Specimen C, subdued the guards, and escaped into the mountains. We had two operatives in the area prior to the breakout. They were acting outside orders, but some data they'd gathered prior to loss of contact was retrieved. It has since become relevant in light of the breakout, although Tseng is eager not to go public with the information for fear of the attention it would bring the department."

"Meaning his superiors don't know about it." Just like they didn't know what Cissnei had really been up to while 'deep undercover in AVALANCHE'. "I don't think I've ever heard you say that much at once before."

"Cissnei," Rude said gravely, "Specimen Z is believed to be the SOLDIER Zack Fair, previously thought deceased following the Nibelheim Incident. He is alive, armed, and on the loose. His current whereabouts are unknown, as are his motives and destination."

Sudden cold washed over Cissnei. Despite Aerith's assurances he was alive, and despite her own half-lidded hopes of the same, and subsequent rebukes that he _had_ to be dead, just so the truth of where he was didn't hurt so much, to hear it confirmed so bluntly …

Her mouth felt like she'd eaten concrete. Now _this_ was a proper emotional reaction. "Why are you telling me this?"

"Tseng ordered me to."

"Why?"

"You are to return to Midgar immediately."

Now the cold turned to ice. Her immediate reaction was to refuse. Almost immediately she realised what that meant. A Turk didn't refuse orders. For once she wished Rude was more expressive, so she could read his reactions and know how much of her feelings showed in her face. He could read her like a book, but unless he gave some kind of verbal indication, Rude was as open as a padlock.

"My mission isn't completed," Cissnei said slowly.

"You have new orders."

"So what happens to the objective of my current mission?"

"Tseng has made arrangements."

"Someone else is taking over in my place?" Why did that make her feel so put out? There was going soft, and then there was turning into a bloody doormat. "Who?"

"That's not your concer-"

"It damn well _is_ my concern." Cissnei forced her voice back down to a normal level and thanked Gaia nobody else was around. Mideel went to bed with the sun and slept deeply. Once upon a time she would've hated that, but now it was comfortingly simplistic. "I've spent close to four years of my life on this mission. You have no idea what I've had to do to keep things ticking over – the things I've sacrificed, and the things I've had to do that are _completely absent_ from the Turk job description. You do _not_ then get to tell me it's none of my concern when I get replaced, and without even a good reason."

Some people intimidated others by looming, shouting, or getting very quiet. Rude didn't bother with any of that needless effort. He just kept up his usual stare behind tinted lenses and waited for their own nerves to do the rest. It helped that he was over six feet of pure muscle and more testosterone than an entire football team.

Cissnei stared right back at him.

"Is the nature of your relationship with the Ancient sexual?"

She nearly choked on her own tongue. "_What_?"

"Or is there some other reason why you seem to be so emotionally invested in the safety and wellbeing of your-"

"Four. Years." You could have carved your initials in solid steel with the tone of Cissnei's voice. "Twenty-four hours a day. Seven days a week. Three hundred and sixty-five days a year. Four consecutive years. That's how long I've had this detail. That is more than enough time to become 'emotionally invested' – _without_ sleeping with Aerith." Was Rude always this … well, rude? She remembered that as more Reno's role. Maybe part of his personality had rubbed off on his taciturn partner since she saw them last. As she well knew, four years was an extremely long time. Or maybe he'd always been this way and her memory was getting faulty with age. "Now just tell me why the hell Tseng wants me back _now_, of all times, and who's going to take my place _here_? Is it you? Is that the reason you were picked for this; to send me back and fill in for me here?" Rude wasn't exactly the type of guy who could pass unnoticed in a crowd, and subterfuge was key when it came to protecting Aerith.

"You're very hostile," Rude said after a moment.

"No, really?"

"And sarcastic."

"Shock! Horror! Someone call the presses. It's front-page news that'll knock your socks off!"

"Tseng wants you to track Zack Fair and bring him in. Kakutou will be relieving you here."

"Tseng wants me to …" The words registered and immediately her features scrunched into a petulant scowl. She searched for words that would relay her anger without coming out as an outright refusal.

"Kakutou will arrive the morning after I make my report of this conversation."

"So he'll be here tomorrow." A feeling went through Cissnei that defied description. She felt inexplicably torn between the knowledge that Zack was finally free, and having to leave Aerith because of it. There was an irony there she didn't appreciate. No-win choices had never been her forte, especially when they'd already been made for her. No doubt Tseng had his reasons, and they'd be obvious as soon as she thought about it, but right now her response was still one of incredulity, relief and resentment.

Rude nodded. "You can debrief him on how best to proceed with this mission. He has the basic facts from Tseng. You will be expected to bring him up to speed before returning to Midgar."

"And Shinra," she added absently.

"Of course." Again, the barest hint of puzzlement entered Rude's monotone, as if he was thinking: _Where else?_

She was a Turk. Of course she had to return to Shinra. Where else could Turks possibly go when not on missions?

"Well, at least I'll get to see everybody again. And I can finally wash out this ridiculous hair dye. Black hair suits Naifu far better than it suits me. I can just imagine what Helena would say if she could see me in this get-up. She'd probably have a heart attack at how non-conformist I've become." Cissnei tried to lighten the mood – more to mask her own internal tumult than because she felt like making small-talk. It was like trying to move a tonne of bricks by tickling it with a feather.

Rude's expression was too stony to be coincidental.

"What is it?"

"We've lost operatives since you left."

Her heart sank. _A Turk isn't supposed to feel grief too hard. Don't cling, don't linger, just accept loss and move on; that's what Veld taught you. Grief slows you down and gets you killed. _She swallowed. Veld himself had been a casualty. Tseng had told them that the man several of them thought of like a father was dead alongside his psychotic biological daughter, and he had said it all without a flicker of emotion. Tseng, the super student, Veld's protégé. Of course he'd learned his teacher's lessons well.

"Who?" Cissnei asked.

"Helena and Richie were apparently leaking information to an outside source. They were the operatives lost at the Nibelheim facility. Their information has been useful, since it allowed us to identify Specimens Z and C, but we're still locating who, exactly, it was being leaked to, and for what purpose. The most obvious answer based on currently known facts is that Helena and Richie were in the process of defecting and their trip to Nibelheim was some kind of loyalty test."

"_Helena_ defected?" Cissnei said incredulously. Logical, devoted, fanatical Helena, who had practically salivated when invited to join the Turks, had _turned traitor_? Surely not. It was impossible. It was …

Four years. Four friggin' years. A person could change a lot in four years. Maybe Richie finally broke through her shell, eroded her stiff-necked pride and she … became a completely different person? No. it couldn't be true. And what was with _Richie_ turning on the Turks as well? He _loved_ his job! He'd given up everything in order to be a Turk!

"We're still looking into it," Rude said cryptically. Though he didn't raise his hand, Cissnei imagined him checking off on his fingers as he went on. "Naifu was killed subduing a rogue street gang under the Plate. Rod died prior to the same incident while fighting members of the biker group he abandoned to join Shinra. Tama and Juu were involved in a helicopter crash that also killed several Shinra executives and may have links to a resurging AVALANCHE."

Cissnei dropped her head. Her fists clenched reflexively. "Fuck," she muttered. All those deaths, and she'd known nothing about them. She had fought alongside those people. They were her colleagues and friends. And while they were dying, she was dying her hair, playing nursemaid and getting misty-eyed over a SOLDIER who might as well have been dead, for all the chance she'd had at ever seeing him again. The other Turks should have meant more to her than Zack, but who had occupied more of her thoughts since she'd been gone? Nobody who wore the suit.

Rude wasn't finished. "Wabi is currently AWOL. Suspected defection. We're not entirely sure why or who to. Yet. It's possible his desertion is linked to Helena and Richie, but that theory remains unconfirmed. It's more likely his actions are unrelated, since he wasn't disclosing confidential information to unauthorised persons before he abandoned his post."

Cissnei could understand Wabi running off more than Helena or Richie. Wabi had been coerced into joining the Turks when they were desperate to flesh out their ranks during the AVALANCHE crisis. It had been a choice between rotting in prison and accepting the job offer, and he hadn't much fancied life behind bars. His relationship with the Turks had always been somewhat cool – perhaps because he knew he'd be escaping as soon as the opportunity presented itself. Even so, news that he'd gone hit Cissnei hard after hearing about the deaths of her other comrades.

"Legend?" She hated that her voice came out as a croak.

Rude didn't acknowledge the hoarseness. "Costa del Sol."

"Again?" The last time Legend had been relegated there was when he refused to rescue a kidnapped arms dealer for Shinra and was put under house arrest. He'd been reinstated as a full Turk during the AVALANCHE insurgency, and his manic enjoyment of his work indicated no desire to go back into retirement. "What did he do to get put under house arrest again?"

"He isn't under house arrest. He's on compassionate leave."

"He … what?" Was that even possible? The concept was so alien is might as well have had antennae and a spaceship. There were only a few ways to leave the Turks, after all, and quitting wasn't one of them – but as Rude's next words proved, Legend had lived up to his nickname and tried to pull off the impossible. Even more impressive, Shinra had almost let him. Their leniency bespoke their respect of Legend's skills and also how he'd come to lose his old name and be known to all only as 'The Legendary Turk'.

"His skills were considered too valuable to lose when he submitted his resignation. Shinra felt a sabbatical would be more advisable, with the intention he return to work when suitably recovered."

"So basically they didn't want to just get rid of him because he might be useful in the future, but he knows too much for them to let him be a loose cannon, so they've put him out to pasture where they can keep an eye on him." Cissnei frowned. "Wait, recovered? From what?"

"He reacted badly to Naifu's death. Suffered a breakdown. Held himself responsible. Apparently they had a relationship." It was typical Rude-style brevity, which told Cissnei there was way more to the story than she was getting.

"_Legend_ and _Naifu_?" The contrast was startling, although … Naifu, despite childhood tragedy, had a playful side that probably fitted quite well with Legend's carefree ways, without letting them get too out of hand. He was a womaniser, Cissnei remembered, but it was possible that rejoining the Turks after his last 'incarceration' on the Costa del Sol had sparked a desire for more than just a meaningless fling. His reaction to Naifu's death would seem to indicate his feelings ran deeper than Cissnei might ever have expected. Stranger things had happened, and stranger couples, too.

_Like me and Zack._

Cissnei thrust that thought away so hard she nearly fell over. She already knew about Reno, and if Tseng had sent Rude then _he_ was obviously still alive. Tan was lost years ago, tracking the deserter Genesis Rhapsodos, while she was still in Midgar. That just left …

"What about Youhei?"

The beautiful martial arts expert was the toughest of all the female Turks – even tougher than the gifted Helena. As a former mercenary, Youhei was used to keeping herself distant from the nastier aspects of their work without alienating her colleagues. She was too competent and experienced to not still be alive.

Right?

"Youhei is currently on a mission in Wutai," Rude said simply. Cissnei's heart rose out of her lower bowel until he added, "Tracking Wabi."

_Don't cling, don't linger_, she reminded herself. _Just accept the losses and move on. Don't think about them. They're not thinking about you anymore. They … oh fuck it._

"So basically what you're telling me is that the only Turks left in Midgar right now are Tseng and Kakutou?"

"Correct."

"That was the point where you were supposed to tell me the names of the young upstarts you've been training as replacements for everyone who's been lost. You mean there _aren't _any replacements? The department's been decimated!"

"Hence your recall."

"That doesn't make any sense. Recalling me won't increase our numbers; it's just exchanging one warm body for another. What the hell is Tseng up to, not replacing people?"

"He has been searching for suitable replacements," Rude said, a trifle defensively. "The results have not been favourable."

"What's that supposed to mean?"

"There have been some shifts in the hierarchy in the last four years. Heidegger has a more prominent role in the day-to-day running of the department now. His methods for recruitment are … more linear than Veld or Tseng's."

Cissnei fixed Rude was what she hoped was an inscrutable look. Heidegger was an imbecile who shouldn't have been allowed within five miles of a delicate operation. Veld wasn't above recruiting Turks from all walks of life if the situation demanded it, and they had useful skills to bring to the table. Heidegger wouldn't dream of combing prisons and orphanages, or employing criminals, rich kids and mercenaries. Admittedly, considering what had happened with Helena, Richie and Wabi, Veld wasn't always on the mark with his choices, but he'd at least he'd scored a bull's-eye with people like Tseng. Heidegger wasn't even hitting the board.

"All right," Cissnei said. "I'll concede that one. I've been out of the loop for a while."

"Are you declining your orders to return, Cissnei?"

"I … no." Her fists were bunching again. She forced her hands to unclench. "No, I'm not. I'll accept a new mission." She poured everything she had into her best persuasive glare. "But I want to meet Kakutou in the morning and go over a few things with him."

"Naturally. He will arrive at 0700 hours." Obviously considering the exchange to be finished, Rude turned on his heel and began to walk away.

"Hey, Rude!" Cissnei yelled suddenly, forcing him to turn to look at her. "What about you?"

"Me?"

"Anything new with you in the last four years that I should know about?"

"That you _should_ know?" Rude echoed. "No. That you would _want_ to know …" He left the sentence hanging and Cissnei's jaw the same way.

Did _Rude_ just make a joke?

Still feeling like the world had started spinning in the other direction, Cissnei made her way home. Or … not home anymore. Not home in the first place, really; just a shared living space. She wasn't surprised to find Aerith waiting on the front step when she arrived.

Cissnei regarded her for a moment before saying, "He's free."

"I know," Aerith whispered. "I felt it." She shivered, and Cissnei got the feeling it wasn't really anything to do with the temperature. "He's not in pain anymore," she sighed, her relief and happiness so obvious they were almost touchable. "He's finally going to come back. He's finally coming back to us, Cissnei." When Aerith looked up, her eyes were shining with that thing Cissnei herself had always had such problems holding onto: hope.

"Yeah," she said without any passion, considering this was the guy they'd both invested so much time in. In a roundabout way, if it hadn't been for Zack, this mission wouldn't have even existed, and Aerith and Cissnei would never have met. Not properly, anyway, with introductions and everything. Cissnei's tone made Aerith's head snap up in alarm, ready to be told the news of Tseng's orders and the brand spanking new bodyguard he was sending. "He's finally coming back."


	49. Elena: Mourner

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><p><strong>49. Elena: Mourner<strong>

* * *

><p>Elena always resented her sister. She loved her, but she also hated her in that way younger siblings hated older brothers and sisters they were compared to. <em>Why can't you be more like your sister?<em> or _Your sister never did that!_ or _Can't you follow your sister's example for once? _As kids it had been irritating, especially since her sister spent her childhood not really knowing _how _to be a child. She was too serious and staid, but that appealed to their father, since he had no idea how to deal with children who acted like children.

When they got older and her hormones kicked it, his obvious preference had made Elena want to stamp her feet and scream. It only got worse when her sister moved out but left her ghost behind, so whenever he looked at his youngest daughter their father still superimposed his eldest. For a man who excelled at military strategy, he failed at this most basic of mental manoeuvres.

"I'm not her!" Elena yelled at him once. "Can't you just accept that instead of constantly trying to make me like her? Can't you accept me for who _I_ am?"

It was a shame, really. With no mother in the picture, and a sister so much older than herself, it had always been Elena and her father. It should have made them closer, but instead it drove a wedge between them. He spent longer and longer hours at the Military Academy, and she went home each day pretending she didn't care that it was cold cereal for dinner again.

For a long time she tried to be as unlike her sister as she could. She flunked all her subjects at school, drank, smoked, and rebelled in typically teenage fashion. She worked to be as opposite as she could, even though it was exhausting and the taste of alcohol made her feel sick from the first mouthful. It hurt that the only time her father noticed her was when she got her very own juvenile record for joyriding with a classmate who broke into their teacher's car. Even then it was only to apologise to the teacher and force her to apologise too.

Eventually she quit the smoking and drinking because it screwed up her head and she was tired of waking up feeling worse than when she went to sleep. Her father didn't notice that turnaround, either.

She started to work hard, thinking maybe if she outstripped her sister she'd finally get some respect in her own right. It was galling that the only way she could define herself in her father's eyes was by setting herself up to be compared with someone else. Were other families like that? Did other girls work in bars to pay for private tuition and to prove they could be around lots of alcohol without getting smashed? Did other girls get into the Shinra Military Academy, a highly male institution, not to advance the cause for feminism, but to showcase their skills in a place their fathers couldn't ignore them?

He still managed it, though. Even five Elite Emblems and official status as a child prodigy didn't make her stand out as her own person in his eyes.

"Your sister got six," he said at Elena's graduation. She wanted to hit him, but settled for stalking away without a word so she didn't embarrass herself in front of all the Shinra bigwigs who had come to the ceremony to scout for new employees.

Her sister was there too, of course; dressed in her impeccable suit, looking coiffed and perfect as usual. Elena managed to avoid her for most of the day. There was a hairy moment at the punchbowl, when President Shinra blocked her path and she clumsily tripped over the tablecloth, spilling punch all over him as she hustled away from the approaching blonde bullet, but mostly it was easy to mingle and keep at least a dozen people between them at all times.

"Oof! Excuse me!" she apologised for the millionth time when she bumped into someone because she was busy scanning the room instead of watching where she was going. She looked up into a pair of dark eyes that looked as though the word 'inscrutable' had been coined for their owner's personal usage. Likewise 'mysterious', 'intelligent' and 'drop dead gorgeous'.

"Elena, yes?" the man said, not acknowledging her clumsiness.

"Um …"

"An impressive success rate today. You must be very proud."

For some reason she got the feeling this wasn't meant as just the tedious statement it would have been from anyone else. Nothing that came out of this guy's mouth would have sounded tedious, at least not to her, based on the little thrill that had gone through her when he said her name. His exotic looks seemed out of place amidst the officers and bureaucrats who had attended the graduation ceremony.

Then she registered his suit – identical to the ones worn by President Shinra's bodyguards – and her heart sank.

"My sister got six Elite Emblems," she replied dispiritedly. Of course, he'd already know that.

The man raised one dark eyebrow at her. "Do you always critique your performance based on others'?"

"Might as well. Everybody else seems to." It was a childish and self-pitying thing to say, on today of all days, but she was tired and fed up, and it just slipped out.

He paused a moment before replying – just long enough for Elena to start to feel uncomfortable and unwanted, like she was supposed to have picked up on the signal to leave but missed it. Big change there.

"It's a narrow mind that judges by a yardstick created by others instead of by the person being judged."

Elena stared at him. Was that as complimentary as it sounded, or had she misunderstood his meaning? She was so unused to praise she had trouble recognising it these days.

A flash of blonde over his shoulder caught her attention. "E-Excuse me," she muttered, backing away. "I have to be somewhere ..." The blonde bob was headed their way like a scud missile. She couldn't stay and talk to her sister. She _couldn't_. "... else."

His eyes barely flicked away from her, but she knew he'd clocked what was going on. He nodded, hands clasped behind his back. "You have a lot of potential, Elena. It will be interesting to see how it develops."

Okay, no way she could misinterpret _that_. The dizzy little thrill lasted until she was lost in the crowd again and couldn't see anything but redheads and brunettes.

In the end, however, her sister cornered her in the one place no drop dead gorgeous man could protect her: the Ladies'. Elena saw her approaching in the mirror. She bit her tongue, anticipating a condescending line or some drivel about finally showing commitment to her studies. Her sister had never approved of her waywardness. She probably believed that some kind of short, sharp shock had knocked some sense into Elena, rather than Elena just choosing to turn her life around because she wanted to. Elena braced herself.

Instead, her sister said, "I am sorry."

Elena was confused. "What? What the hell for?" It felt good to cuss, even if only mildly. Her sister was so bloody _formal _and _proper_ all the time. She'd probably had the stick inserted up her butt at birth.

"For Father. It's wrong of him to keep comparing you to me. I told him to stop when I heard what he was saying."

"I bet that went down well." Elena covered her shock with snippiness. She'd resisted talking to her sister for years, especially about _that_. There had never seemed any point. She'd just assumed her sister felt the same way – that Elena could never measure up because she was so bloody _perfect_.Even when Elena got mixed up with the Ravens she'd steered clear of talking to her about it. Their father was a topic fenced off by a tall hedge of thorns. That was on fire. And studded with mines.

"Father was …" her sister hesitated. "He was very Father about it."

Elena shrugged and inadvertently dipped the sleeves of her expensive new shirt into the grimy water. Father, not Dad. Mother, not Mom. Sometimes she really didn't feel like she was related to this strangely well-mannered woman. Superficially they were nearly identical, except for their eye-colour and, oh yeah, their personalities. "Yeah, well, you cast a pretty big shadow."

Her sister went silent for a long moment, before saying, "So does Mother."

Those three words told Elena a lot about her sister – far more than years of hearing their father singing her praises, or the vague memories of living with her when she was still only a little kid. Just as she was constantly weighed against her sister's achievements, so her sister was judged by how she compared with their dead mother. It seemed their father just couldn't accept _anyone_ for who they were. He was always reaching for a yardstick shaped like someone else, regardless of how it affected people.

"_It's a narrow mind that judges by a yardstick created by others instead of by the person being judged."_

In that moment, hunched defensively over a sink in a public bathroom, Elena felt a sort of … almost kinship with her sister. It was an odd and fluttery sensation, as if she'd swallowed a cocoon that had turned into a moth in her gut. She grunted something inarticulate, which her sister took to mean more than it did. She excused herself, leaving Elena alone with her thoughts.

When she finally emerged it was to discover both her sister and the exotic man had been called away on some kind of emergency.

"She said to tell you she'd make reservations at your favourite restaurant next time she has leave," said Elena's martial arts sensei. "And … let me see if I've got this right… I wrote it down word-for-word like she asked … ah, here we go. 'It's time to talk properly, for once'. Does that mean anything to you?"

Elena nodded, and hoped her jumpy tummy didn't mean someone had spiked the punch. For the first time in forever, the stirrings of hope ignited in her.

She never saw her sister again.

The news, when it came, was a blur. Elena had never seen her father cry before. He was a stern man; the kind who believed in 'cruel to be kind' and 'toughening up' under pressure. He still wore his medals to make himself feel important, and to remind himself of what it meant to be a 'real man' back in a time 'when men were men'.

Yet when Elena came home from the bar one night to see a man in a suit leaving their home, and found her father hunched over the kitchen table, she realised another important truth that she'd first come across in that bathroom mirror. Human is human, no matter what the package, and to be human is to be frail in some way. Nobody was perfect. It was your imperfections and how you dealt with them, not your successes, that made you who you were and decided your worth.

Elena learned a lot from her family, though it took her years to realise it. From her mother she learned how to leave a mark on the world so she'd never be forgotten. From her father she learned that bottling up your feelings was the worst thing you could do, and if you cared about someone you shouldn't disguise it, because you'd only regret it afterwards. And from her sister she learned a number of things. Firstly, how to access her own inner drive to succeed. Secondly, to never follow in someone else's footsteps, but to carve your own path in the world.

Thirdly, to not go AWOL and leave everyone thinking you were a traitor who'd died selling Shinra secrets to their enemies.

Her sister was many things, but a traitor was _not_ one of them.

"I _will_ become a Turk someday," Elena swore. She'd already made that vow before, after the Ravens, but when she heard the whispers of 'double agent' and 'turncoat' she added the promise: "And I'll find out what really happened to you. I'll prove to everyone you're not a traitor. I'll get into the Turks so I can get at those records and prove you were innocent. I'll get to the truth."

She wasn't one for standing on hillsides making vows to the stars and sun and moon. She was, however, the kind to make sure the Head of the Turks was aware of what a brilliant addition she'd be to his team, even though they hadn't been recruiting any new Turks in a while. Elena didn't care about that. She'd _make_ them want her and her skills, even if she had to camp out on his doorstep and juggle revolvers at him on his way to work each morning.

Elena only had one photo of her sister, and she kept it tucked away where she could look at it to remind herself what she was striving for. She never even entertained the thought her sister could have been a deserter or traitor. Eventually, it was that conviction, more than her skills, which made the man called Tseng notice her.

"I'll clear your name someday," Elena told the picture of two little girls, so naive and different from the women they'd become. The taller one – more a teenager than a girl, really – had eyes like ice-chips and blonde hair already cut in her distinguishing bob. The other girl was barely more than a toddler; brown-eyed, pig-tailed, holding an ice-cream her sister had just bought for her and laughing like she didn't have a care in the world.

She had found the photo in the back of her sister's yearbook from when she graduated from the Military Academy. Elena didn't remember the picture being taken. That hurt more than anything.

She refused to cry. When she was a good enough Turk, with a high enough security level to uncover the truth, and she could finally lay her sister's spirit to rest, _then _she'd let herself cry for what had been lost. Not before.

Even so, she bent her head and lightly brushed her lips over the photo, the way she'd never done in real life, when it might have counted for something.

"I'm sorry, Helena."


	50. Reno: Bodyguard

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><p><strong>50. Reno: Bodyguard<strong>

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><p>Reno blew out a breath to lift a lock of hair hanging in front of his eyes. It wafted as long as his lungs took to empty, and then flopped back down. He waited ten seconds, listening to the noises around him to make sure nothing had changed. Nope, nothing to report. Just more of the same – as long as 'same' meant 'boring as hell'. He sucked in a new breath and blew it out again. He did this three times before someone elbowed him in the ribs.<p>

"You're not even trying to look professional."

"I'm _bored_," he whispered back.

"Can't you take anything seriously?"

"Depends. Has anything interesting happened yet?"

Sandan surveyed the scene. Her face twisted up in a grimace that contradicted her reprimand. "Does another round of photographer troglodytes count?"

Reno blinked. "Troglo-what?"

"Troglodytes. Very stupid and annoying people. Don't strain your brain, darling. It'll turn the same colour as your hair, and then you'll have an aneurysm, which means I'll be forced to do your share of the workload as well as my own. And considering how mind-numbing this assignment is, if that happens, I'll never forgive you."

Reno smirked. He knew better than to read too much into the 'darling', since everyone was 'darling' to Sandan. In another life she was probably some refined lady who enjoyed afternoon tea with crumpets and hunting in red coat, bugle and boots. In this one, however, she wore her dark suit with style, and managed to exude an air of elegance despite the gigantic messy ponytail that trailed halfway down her back. You could never mistake Sandan for a girl who'd grown up without money. On poor people, dishevelled looked like you'd just crawled out of bed. Only the truly rich could make it look classy.

Reno looked down at his own untucked shirt. He was pulling in more per year than he'd ever dreamed when he was growing up on the streets of Midgar, but on him, scruffy was just scruffy. He couldn't even remember where his tie _was_, and could read the history of his last few meals in the multi-coloured blobs on his front.

Why was it he never cared about that kind of shit when he was partnered with Rude? Rude was always _perfectly_ dressed, but Reno didn't care how he compared with the big bald lunkhead. He kind of liked the visual combination of them, actually – people had a tendency to underestimate one of them when they saw the other, and that was a mistake he and Rude had taken full advantage of over the years. Plus, it would never even occur to Rude to say anything about Reno's appearance.

Put him with Sandan for an assignment, however, and suddenly Reno started noticing random, useless stuff like the _shine of his shoes_. He didn't even care about that shit when _Tseng_ was around, for fuck's sake, and Tseng was almost as well-groomed as Rude even when beating seven bells out of thugs in back-alleys.

_Come back Rude, all is forgiven_.

It wasn't unheard of for Tseng to send them on separate assignments, but it was unusual for those assignments not to be solo jobs. Tseng knew when not to mess with a good thing, and Reno and Rude's partnership was the definition of _'if it ain't broke, don't fix it'._

Still, Reno had come to trust Tseng's judgement as much as his own. More than his own, actually, for reasons he didn't like to go into. Tseng was a strategist. He could plan several steps ahead of both the competition and his own side, and saw all the different outcomes of a single action when everyone else was still bunching their fists. It was why Reno had been a Turk longer, but Tseng had advanced to Head of the Department when Veld was killed.

That whole, and his own actions during it, still stung a little. It was only thanks to Tseng's iron-clad reputation that the Turks who had sided with Veld hadn't all had more than their contracts terminated after he was assassinated along with his daughter – and Reno had his own doubts about how accurate the reports of Veld and Elfé's deaths were. The then-rookies had put their lives on the line to help Veld save his only family, and barely escaped a more lethal punishment thanks to Tseng's excellent debating skills – plus his concession about Heidegger having a larger role in the Administrative Research Department. That had been a wrench, but in order to save his people, Tseng had made the sacrifice and effectively hobbled himself as leader. Those he'd 'rescued' had, for the most part, been even more loyal and hard-working as a result; determined to prove themselves worthy of working under Tseng.

Weird, how such an unemotional guy could inspire such ardent loyalty. Kind of like Veld himself. Except that not everybody had remained loyal to Veld when he needed them, had they? Guilt was a foreign emotion to Reno and he didn't like it much. He'd vowed a long time ago never to make the same mistake twice. As a Turk, mistakes got you killed. If you survived one the first time, you didn't deserve to survive if you were stupid enough to make it again.

Tseng knew what he was doing. That didn't make Reno's current assignment any less tedious, though. Playing bodyguard to Rufus Shinra was grunt work, especially since the President had also set several other gun-toting members of his employ to safeguard his son during this press conference, and had brought in outside help as well. Reno would have been insulted if he'd cared enough, but truthfully the only thing this detail filled him with was revulsion at the long hours of standing around doing nothing and unable to entertain himself since he was, effectively, on display along with the rest of Rufus's crew.

President Shinra had tried to kick up a stink when he heard Sandan was part of the Turk dispatch Tseng had chosen, but quietened when Rufus, for reasons unknown, told his father it was fine. Sandan's behaviour had been exemplary since the AVALANCHE episode, but that still stood out on her record like a severed finger in a plate of éclairs. Yet if it bothered Rufus that she had been part of the group who kidnapped him to preserve their own safety when helping Veld and Elfé, he never mentioned it. Nor did he react to her with anything other than polite acceptance when they met again. Reno just couldn't figure the kid out sometimes. Rufus was odd, but odd in the quiet way that makes you uneasy but unable to explain it; like waking up in a darkened bedroom and suspecting you're not alone in your house. It freaked Sandan out, Reno could tell, though she'd retained her usual bubbly attitude. Only someone who knew her could tell she was uneasy around Rufus.

It escaped Reno why these kinds of events even took place. Press conferences? It wasn't like Shinra had any competition for business, or needed voters to keep them in power. He supposed it was more to keep the masses from getting any uppity ideas by presenting the company with a human face. Civil disobedience was costly to put down without turning it into a fully-fledged revolution – and the public was more likely to respond to an attractive young man like Rufus than his grizzled old pa. Too bad for them they didn't know the kid's pretty face concealed a ruthlessness that made even President Shinra nervous – another reason Reno suspected Rufus had been sent out, away from his nervous father's side, to play nice for the cameras.

_Who does the old man think he's fooling?_ Reno wondered. _He knows the clock's ticking and Rufus could probably run the company better than him already._ A big claim for someone so young, but not an unfounded one, in Reno's opinion.

He watched Rufus smile and wave like he was some empty-headed rich boy who'd killed off all his brain cells with hairspray and champagne. The photographers snapped away happily. Their captions would be inane as the curve of Rufus's lips, and about as truthful. Never trust appearances. Reno knew _that_ one better than anyone. It had been Veld's most oft-repeated rule for how to be a Turk, right after 'don't die'.

"You know," Sandan said slyly, "if you keep staring at him like that, the gossip rags will have a field day. Before you know it they'll be penning your torrid illicit love story, casting you as some sort of antiheroic piece of rough, beguiled into giving up your wicked, wicked ways and turning over a new leaf by the young master's youthful innocence, and then hey presto, before you can say 'star-crossed lovers', you won't have a shred of street cred left to your name and all the criminals will laugh when they see you extending your big stick."

Reno linked his hands behind his head, pressing his elbows together so his words were hidden from the cameras. "You are so full of shit."

"Maybe I should sell the rights to the story myself." She was smirking. Her eyes danced with glee just a shade off malicious. "Reno the Rentboy. Or Reno the Keen-o. It's your own fault for choosing such a phallic-looking weapon."

"And a shotgun isn't?"

"I'm a woman. It's allowed. I'm just competing in a testosterone-laden world, darling. You carry around a metal penis-extension that spits sparkles."

It was the most insulting way he'd ever heard his electro-mag rod described, but rather than irritate, it just made him smile. "Talk about not taking anything seriously, yo," he muttered. "Ain't you meant to be the professional one between the two of us?"

"I'm here to keep Rufus safe, not your ego."

"Yeah right." His smile vanished. "Like he needs us. This trip is bullshit. Probably Heidegger just wants to yank our chains; make sure we know who's in charge. He knows Turks aren't built for this kind of slow-lane crap. I'll bet Tseng got up his nose about something again, and the bastard undercut him to show him who's boss."

"I think you mean 'went over his head," Sandan corrected softly, her forehead pleated in an uncharacteristic frown. "'Undercut' means they both put in a bid to provide a service and Heidegger was the cheaper one."

"Damn right he's cheap! A cheap, nasty-ass, second-rate phoney," Reno grumbled.

"Don't hold back, darling. Say what you really think." Sandan didn't rebuke him for insulting their boss in public. She sighed. "Doubtless you're right, though. This whole thing reeks of parsimoniousness."

"The hell? You eaten a dictionary?"

"You could do with improving your vocabulary, if you don't want to become a troglodyte yourself, darling. All this effing and blinding doesn't make you sound big or clever, you know." She shook her head. "It's only when you start looking for it that you realise how rife the Turks are with power politics."

"Didn't used to be." _Not while Veld was in charge_, Reno added silently.

Actually, there probably had been power politics going on then, but Veld had taken care of all that with minimal ramifications for his agents. Now it was all different, though.

Another unexpected stab of guilt went through Reno – twice in one day? He must be getting sick or something. His eyes slid sideways, taking in Sandan's profile. She had fought for Veld, even if, for whatever reason, they had lost him in the end. Reno knew she wasn't the type to hold the past over anyone. They'd worked together before and it had never come up. Still, the fact lay between them like something a dog had left behind. Sandan, a rookie with barely a wrinkle in her new suit, had stood up for Veld and risked everything for him. Reno, the veteran who owed the guy for pulling him off the streets and giving him a life beyond the gutter, had not. He had remained loyal to Shinra, while Sandan had remained loyal to the Turks.

_Never make the same mistake twice, Reno._ Veld's voice floated back to him through the years. _If fate's kind enough to give you a second chance, don't screw it up with your own stupidity. _

Sandan shrugged, cupping her elbows with her hands. "You never know. Maybe this trip won't be as mind-numbingly dull as we think. Maybe something interesting will happen, and we'll be putting our names down first for future instalments of smile-and-wave-for-the-monkeys-with-the-cameras."

Reno snorted. "Yeah right. So far it's been a real laugh-riot."

As if on cue, one of the photographers darted forward and knelt on one knee, camera pressed to his face. He waved a hand, gesturing Rufus forward. Rufus shook his head but waved guilelessly, right before he crumpled to the ground, a patch of red blossoming on his white suit. The report of gunfire sounded an instant later.

"Shit!" Reno cursed, swinging into action without a moment's hesitation. His training and experience dictated his actions faster than his conscious mind could compete with, and he gave himself up to the momentum of instinct for the next few moments.

He whizzed forward, trusting Sandan to have his back. She was long-range, whereas he was an up-close-and-personal kind of guy. He had his EMR out before he'd taken three steps, had it charged with a fresh pulse by the fourth, and by the seventh was up to his neck in the commotion.

The crowd had flung themselves backwards, away from the source of the noise. Cameramen and reporters all tried to get away, even though they clearly weren't the targets. One man, however, wasn't fighting to get away. His movements set off Reno's mental alarms. They were too calm, too at odds with the unexpectedness situation – unless it wasn't unexpected for him.

Two shots flew past Reno's head as Sandan took no chances. The guy, just raising another fake camera, cried out as his left knee and right elbow turned to red pulp. In the unlikely event she had called it wrong, he wouldn't die, provided he got medical help. The camera-gun clattered uselessly to the floor, as did he.

"Secure the perimeter!" Sandan shouted in a voice that brooked no argument. She barked out orders even though nobody had actually put her in charge, and Shinra's people followed them without question.

Instead of rushing to Rufus alongside the other Shinra drones, Reno vaulted them and made straight for the remaining threat. The best defence was a good offence, no question. Sandan would secure an outer circle to prevent more threats getting in, but the one already inside the circle was his.

The EMR smashed the fake camera into the air. Reno's strike carried on to connect with the face of the prat behind it. One crushed nose later and the guy was on the ground, spurting blood and semi-conscious. The whole thing had happened inside thirty seconds – about as much time as it took Reno to form the thought _'I hate irony'_.

The shooter tried to get up. Reno booted him in the crotch. Usually he would've gone for the head, since an insensate tag was easier to tie up than a struggling one, but head-shots were tricky. Too much force and they were dead, and with his system full of sudden adrenaline, mistakes were all too easy to make. It probably wasn't a good idea to kill someone in full view of the media, when right now they'd be colouring their write-ups to favour the brutally-attacked Rufus and, through him, Shinra. A crotch-kick was satisfying, and the guy wouldn't die from it, but the pain would make a good tongue-loosener.

"Who are you?"

The guy levered up an arm and _gave him the finger_. Reno was impressed and insulted at the same time. This dude had cojones, no doubt about it. Too bad for him.

Reno flipped him onto his front, yanked his hands behind him and straddled his back. Turks didn't carry handcuffs, but Reno held tight as he eased the joints as far as they'd go, knowing his own weight would be crushing the guy's chest as well. It looked like he'd just apprehended him and was holding him until someone else took over, like any paid-by-the-hour bodyguard. The rest of the press had fled backwards as Sandan secured the perimeter, and now couldn't hear anything above their own hubbub.

"Wrong answer," Reno whispered close to the guy's ear. "Try again?"

Sandan had the second assassin, who appeared to be trying to get away despite the overwhelming odds against him. Whoever these guys were, intelligence clearly wasn't a job requirement.

"Shin … ra … tool …" the guy panted.

Although spouting tired old rhetoric was, apparently.

"Aw, you're hurting my feelings, yo." Reno applied more pressure. His guy yelped. "You just tried to kill the son of a very powerful man. That really pisses me off, not to mention the dude who signs my pay cheques. If he gets hold of you, this will seem like a walk in the park. I'm not too keen on you making me look bad by forcing him to get his hands dirty, though, so let's get the details hashed out now. Start talking. Who are you?"

"Shinra … must … be … stopped!"

Reno sighed. "Cute. I guess we're gonna do this the hard way." He nodded at one of the hovering grunts, who had handcuffs hanging from his belt. He snapped them obediently around the shooter's wrists, and then backed off at Reno's head-toss. "First it'll be you, me and my associate over there in a soundproofed room. Then it'll be my boss. Then it'll be _his_ boss. Then it'll be the president. That's assuming you survive the first round and still look human enough not to get swept up with the rest of the garbage. There's more you can do with an electro-mag rod than just hit and taser people, yo."

The shooter spat out blood and phlegm. There was broken tooth in the mix as well. "You can't stop an avalanche once it's started to slide," he gurgled. "Not until it's taken out the whole damn mountain."

Reno went cold. AVALANCHE? Again? He'd had enough of those fuckers the last time.

The guy on the ground started to laugh. He craned his face up to look at Reno, eyes, nostrils and throat lit by an unearthly light. The blood on the ground was bubbling.

Reno's eyes went wide. "Fuck!" He turned and ploughed into the Shinra goons, grabbing Rufus and dragging him of the platform. Rufus was alive, having only been shot in the shoulder. That made a lot more sense now – more than the assassins just being really crap shots. Reno didn't even care that he'd grabbed the kid by his bad arm, just carried on moving like a rugby player breaking free of a scrum. "Move it! Take cov-"

He didn't get any further. Whatever the assassin had swallowed before making his move had finished preparing his gut like Rude's best homemade bomb. The explosion wasn't big enough to take out a building, but it was enough to kill or mangle anyone standing too close.

_No wonder he wanted Rufus to get closer for his picture_, a part of Reno's brain thought as the blow-back picked him up and hurled both he and Rufus through the air like a pair of kites with tangled strings in a gale. _Incapacitate the kid, and then blow him up. _The rest of Reno's brain was more occupied with thoughts like _Ow!_ and _This is gonna hurt!_ with a dash of _I'm still alive?_ when they finally came to a stop.

Several chaotic seconds passed. Reno was aware of noises and knew he should get up, but he couldn't process what those noises were, and the signals from his brain to his limbs were all diverting to the wrong places. When he tried to stand, his back arched. When he tried to push himself up on his elbows, his legs jerked convulsively.

"This is humiliating," he tried to say, but it came out sounding more like "Thith ith hooomilllll…"

The world revolved even though he was no longer spinning. His back throbbed. He thought he'd used his body to shield the kid, but everything was too fuzzy to check. His vision greyed at the edges.

_Damn it, I must've hit my head or something. See, this is why I don't play the fucking hero, or antihero, or whatever_, Reno thought, remembering Sandan's teasing. Had that really only been a few minutes ago? The greyness bleached to white in alarm. _Sandan! She was with the other fucker. There was only one blast, right? But if they both swallowed this shit –_

A groan from beneath him let Reno know Rufus was alive. Likewise the quiet words, "Grateful as I am to you for saving my life, it would seem a good idea no to suffocate me when you've gone to the trouble of keeping me alive."

The whiteness retreated and the world came a little more into focus. Reno cussed and tried his best to roll sideways. He had taken the brunt of the blast, but had managed to fetch up lying on top of the kid-billionaire in a very compromising position. He attempted to unhook Rufus's foot from around his neck, failed, and hoped Sandan couldn't see. She'd never let him forget it. The more time passed on without a second explosion, the better he felt about her chances of survival. With a little luck, however, she was taking care of everything else while he looked after their objective.

"Reno, you pillock."

_Irony is having a field day._

"Y'say th' nicest thinnnnnngs," he slurred, relief tasting even weirder than guilt, as Sandan hauled him upright and off Rufus. "G'back … secure perim … prim … terrrr …"

Rufus lay there, apparently working through the pain of his own injuries before even attempting to get up. Any other kid would've been crying, wetting his pants in fear, or at least asking questions about what the hell was going on. Rufus, however, just looked up at both of them with a quizzical expression.

"You saved me."

"All part of the service, sir," Sandan said smartly. Only Reno noticed the subtle mockery to her words. Gore stained the pristine collar and cuffs of her shirt.

A thought niggled at the back of Reno's mind. He tried to grab onto it, but it slipped away like smoke. She shouldn't be here helping him. Who was making sure there weren't any more explosions, or fairy lights dancing above people's heads, or … wait, fairy-lights?

_Oh fuck._

"I thought the Turks weren't bodyguards," Rufus replied, equally smartly.

"Only for people we like."

'Quizzical' turned to 'blank'. Reno tensed, concentrating with an extreme exertion of willpower that always surprised anyone who thought he was just a lazy bum with a bad attitude. Had Sandan gone too far with that smart remark? Rufus wasn't exactly known for his sense of humour, but saving the guy's butt was bound to get them some leeway, right? Crap, but you never could tell. Rufus was a Shinra, after all, and incomprehensible beyond that as well. He had 'crazy and powerful' practically written into his DNA. What was to say putting your life on the line for his would get you any kind of margin for being a smart-aleck? Maybe Rufus thought this kind of thing really was just part of their job description.

"We're whatever we need to be according to the situation, sir," Sandan amended, clearly also reading into Rufus's silence. "Turks always get the job done."

A strange light flickered behind Rufus's eyes. A spark of something – the germ of an idea, perhaps. "Is that so?" Anarchy around them, and he was making small-talk with the hired help? This kid really _was_ strange.

Reno breathed in. There was a curious grinding deep in his chest. Fuck, he must have broken a rib or two. The fairy-lights became brighter, more insistent and colourful.

_Or three or four_, he thought, as he tried to get up and the pain intensified. He grunted, pitching forward until Sandan caught him.

"Reno?"

He tasted blood. It was his own. _Not good. Definitely not good._ Stars exploded in his vision. As they faded they uncoiled an ill-timed bout of nausea. _Throwing up on Rufus Shinra; definitely, __**definitely**__ not good! Funny as hell, but likely to get me canned –_

"Hold tight. Looks like the med team are already on their way over to tend Mister Shinra," Sandan said when he tried to get up again. She pushed herself onto her knees to better support his weight in the awkward position, the abrupt movement putting her head and shoulders above him. "Just stay conscious so you can tell them where it -"

Another shot rang out. Reno was aware of fresh screams and automatic gunfire as the military idiots President Shinra had sent along opened fire on the crowd. Clearly they thought it okay to loose bullets on civilians now that Rufus was no longer between them and the potential threats. No wonder Shinra has such piss-poor public-approval ratings, despite giving the Planet all the power it needed with none of the pollution of fossil fuels.

Reno's mouth was fuzzy and his stomach twisted. Stars exploded anew, dying to black embers. The embers grew, and he watched, numb, as they overtook his sight until there was nothing else. He registered something wet sliding off the side of his face, but couldn't see it. Sticky but scratchy, strands caught in his mouth like his hair always seemed to when he conned Rude into springing for a pizza with the works while they were on duty ...

He had already passed out before his face hit the ground.

He came to some time later. He knew it was later, since he was no longer on the ground and the faces around him had changed – for good or ill. He was in a bed, or at least on a gurney. The ceiling was retina-stabbing white with a strip-light that attempted to make his brain liquefy when he first opened his eyes. He shut them, picking up sounds and smells before trying sights again. Antiseptic. Beeping. Shuffling footsteps. Someone coughing. The scent of lemons? Some kind of floor cleaner, maybe –

"Reno."

He cracked his eyes again. The half-moon of whiteness faded and resolved into a face. "Yo, boss-man." Damn, it felt like he'd chewed his way through a cat's litter tray. A _used_ litter tray.

Tseng's hands were linked behind his back. He didn't bother asking whether Reno was all right. The question was too stupid. He didn't even go for the milder option of asking how Reno felt. Tseng was Tseng – instantly all business, and expecting everyone else to be as well. He knew what Reno would want to know even before Reno did.

"The second shooter got his weapon back in the confusion of the explosion."

"Yeah." Reno's throat was scratchy. "I guessed. Is Rufus –?"

"Alive. It's likely the first assassination attempt wasn't meant to be successful in the way assumed. It was to manipulate Rufus into position and force you to let your guard down. While you were dealing with the living bombs, apparently having neutralised the threat, the medical team weren't removing him from the scene. Sandan's shots disallowed the second shooter's attempts to swallow the last component, but she didn't stay with him to make sure he was completely unarmed. He was aiming for Rufus while he was vulnerable, but missed."

Reno breathed out. Then he wished he hadn't. Someone had hit him with a cure spell or something, but it still hurt like hell. So did the realisation that had started as he fell unconscious. He thought he knew what had hit him in the face – even more with Tseng's clipped words – but like a masochist he still asked, "Sandan?"

Tseng did something too long to be a blink.

Reno turned away. "Fuck."

"She should have stayed with the second shooter," Tseng said, no emotion in his voice. With Tseng, that was more indicative of how he was feeling than if he'd started crying or tearing up the place. "It was sloppy."

She'd been too concerned about Reno, made a beginner's mistake, and it had cost her. The thing sliding down Reno's cheek as he went into La-La Land had been Sandan's notorious ponytail.

His gorge rose, but half-heartedly against whatever drugs they'd pumped into him. There was an IV and a wire stabbed into the crook of his elbow. He must have been torn up pretty bad. "Fuck," he said again, unable to come up with a better eulogy.

Suddenly he turned back to Tseng. "Was it AVALANCHE? The bastard on the ground said they were from AVALANCHE. Is that bunch of eco-terrorist fucktards back?"

Tseng's nostrils flared slightly, but otherwise he gave no indication of his thoughts. "We're looking into it."

"But it could be them."

"It's possible."

Reno shut his eyes. Despite only just waking up, he wanted nothing more than to sleep. He was suddenly so _tired_ it was like he hadn't caught any zees for a week.

AVALANCHE had already taken so much in their screwed-up quest to rid the Planet of Shinra. Like they thought they could actually succeed in that no-brainer? Reno had thought them neutralised, but it appeared he'd been wrong.

_Never make the same mistake twice. _

Now it appeared they'd claimed one more, and were poised to cause fresh anarchy the Turks could ill-afford with their ranks so thin. Sandan had survived AVALANCHE the first time, maintained her job against impossible odds, and clawed her way back into Shinra's good books, only to have it all snatched away again now. The quirk of fate was bitter as month-old coffee.

_I fucking __**hate**__ irony_.

Turks didn't have regrets and didn't linger over death. That was what Veld had taught them. Getting killed was a risk of the job, which they all knew when they put on the suit. Reno remembered his early lessons well, but in that tired, achy moment, he threw them all out the window and spent a moment just cursing the cruelty of chance. Sandan hadn't deserved to die just for caring more than a Turk should in the field. Reno wasn't some romantic hero who had secretly loved and now wanted to avenge her. However, he had respected and liked her, and losing her over something so stupid was a fresh blow after all the others he'd suffered since AVALANCHE and their doomed quest first reared their dim-witted heads.

_If the chance comes to pay those fuckers back for all they've done to the Turks_, he thought savagely, _I'll fucking take it, no matter what the cost. To me, or to anyone else. AVALANCHE needs to pay, and I'll be damned if I let anyone else get their licks in before I do._


	51. Cissnei: Mail Carrier

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><p><strong>51. Cissnei: Mail Carrier<strong>

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><p>Cissnei regarded the approaching man warily. She'd worked with Kakutou when he was just a rookie; when had trouble reconciling the skills that had made him a good detective with the rule-bending that would make him a good Turk. Over six feet tall, built like a brick outhouse, and with the chiselled jaw of classic movie heroes, Kakutou looked like someone who could knock seven bells out of anyone who looked at him funny. In actual fact, despite being a martial arts expert, he was a remarkably gentle man.<p>

Or at least, he had been. Cissnei knew better than anyone the four years could change you. She wondered how all the things she'd learned from Rude had affected someone like Kakutou, who had balked the first time he had to kill a man in more than self-defence.

Her apprehension dispelled a little when he took Aerith's hand and actually _bowed_. He didn't go so far as to kiss the back, but it was close. "Good afternoon. You must be Miss Gainsborough."

"I am," Aerith said politely, but Cissnei caught the wariness in her eyes as well. They'd come out alone, just the two of them, to meet him on the fringe of town. It was risky, but Cissnei had insisted there be no onlookers. "You must be Mr. Kakutou."

"Just Kakutou, please," he said warmly. He had the kind of rich deep voice that, once upon a time, made victims feel safe and witnesses feel like talking. "I am, after all, to be your husband."

Aerith stiffened all over for a second, and then relaxed back into her regular stance. It wasn't quite as naïve as it had been when she lived in Midgar. Even though Sector Five was under the Plate, somehow Aerith had managed to grow up with minimal fighting skills. She'd started some kind of half-assed training, but Cissnei had taken those basics and moulded them in their years on the run together. Aerith wasn't a natural fighter, but she could hold her own with a bo-staff, and knew the value of running away versus standing her ground against stupid odds.

Kakutou looked up at Cissnei. He had always been so courteous with women. It had royally ticked off several female Turks who didn't appreciate being treated like the weaker sex – Youhei most of all, which was paradoxical, since she and Kakutou were the two hand-to-hand experts and should have gotten along much better than they actually had.

Cissnei tilted her chin. "We don't have many details."

Kakutou nodded. "I'm the absentee husband who has finally caught up with my family, who fled our caravan when it was attacked by raiders. Cissnei, you're my sister, and now I'm back you're going off to find your own husband, who also went missing in the raid."

"We're gypsies?" Aerith said in surprise.

Cissnei wondered who had come up with the cover story. Tseng, perhaps? It seemed a tad too romantic for him. Maybe Kakutou himself had concocted it. If so, he was missing a career in sappy novels.

"Aerith, are you sure you're okay with this?" It was a ridiculous question to ask. Like they had much choice in the matter? Still, Cissnei felt bound to ask it. Four years together hadn't made them best friends, but it had bred a sense of responsibility.

She wondered whether Aerith felt the same way, or if she preferred to view the whole thing as yet another period with someone who would inevitably leave her. Aerith seemed to live her life in chunks defined by the people in it and the people who weren't – Hojo and the Shinra scientists, her mother, Zack, her foster mother, and now Cissnei. Small wonder she clung to the hope that those from previous chunks would someday return and break the cycle of loss and abandonment.

Aerith nodded. "You're a Turk," she said softly. "You have a job to do."

Cissnei felt an ill-defined emotion slide through her at the words, but shook it off and turned to Kakutou, ready to give him the lowdown on how to keep them alive until he was relieved or the threat had passed – whichever came first.

Cissnei had now come to accept that Aerith would probably never see Midgar again. It was just too dangerous. Hojo wasn't going to lose his vaunted potation as Head of Science anytime soon. With him at the helm it would never be safe for the last of the Ancient bloodline to be anywhere near Shinra's capital. If the time ever came that Tseng couldn't distract, dissuade or get his superiors off his back about this, things might be different, but for the foreseeable future Aerith was banned from Sector Five and the life she'd left behind there.

As she took Kakutou's map and started walking into the wilderness to find the chopper waiting to take her back to Midgar, Cissnei resisted the urge to look back. She only turned when Aerith called out.

"I … I need to ask a favour," she said in as embarrassed a voice as Cissnei had ever heard from her. She handed over a small box that looked like it had once held a gift, if the purple ribbon on the outside was anything to judge by.

Cissnei looked between it and Aerith, waiting for an explanation.

"You've already done so much for me," Aerith continued. "You and Tseng both, but I … the thing is … I know you told me never to write anything down, but I've been writing these letters, you see … whenever things got really hard and I … I kept them safe and just kept adding to them wherever we went … I had to rescue them a couple of times, when we left suddenly … I'm sorry I broke the rules, but I couldn't not tell … I just … I had to …" She fumbled for words that wouldn't come. Then she stopped and took a breath as if steadying herself. "If you could give them to Tseng, he'll know what to do with them. He's always … I mean … he'll know," she finished lamely, sounding nothing like the scion of a dead race and everything like a young woman cast adrift in a world that had always laced her good fortune with a bitter aftertaste.

Cissnei's throat seemed to close. "They're for Zack, aren't they?"

Aerith nodded. "Please," she said. Sometimes her sincerity could still knock Cissnei for six. It was difficult to believe someone could see and experience the things Aerith had and still remain such a _good_ person. Almost sickening, actually, but at the same time reassuring. There were so few genuinely good people left in the world.

Aerith was one of them. Zack was another.

Hands not trembling, Cissnei took the box.

Turks didn't cling and didn't linger. This was just an assignment. A really, really long and involved assignment, but still just part of the job she'd been trained for. She'd been a Turk since she was a kid. She knew the deal. She had been reassigned and that was all there was to it. No biggie. This assignment and the one she was walking into were both just paperwork waiting to happen.

Nonetheless, not looking over her shoulder was the hardest thing she'd ever done, and the stab of guilt that she was going to find Zack when Aerith couldn't made her feel like the biggest heel in the universe.

She stared at the box in her lap when she was strapped in, fingers cramping until they were well into the flight. Rude was piloting. As ever, he wasn't much for small-talk. Silence filled the cab apart from the steady throb of rotors and engines. Cissnei stared out of the window at the countryside and towns zipping past. She'd visited a lot of them. They all looked a lot smaller now. Kind of insignificant compared to where she was headed.

Her eyes kept being drawn back repeatedly to the box, and her mind raced. Finally, as if ripping off a band-aid, she removed the lid, picked up the first sheet of carefully folded paper, and started to read even though she knew she shouldn't.

Not all the papers in the box were letters. Cissnei's stomach cramped.

Turks weren't supposed to feel guilt. They were just supposed to get the job done. That was the motto: Turks always get the job done. They weren't supposed to have regrets.

But Cissnei did. Far more than was right – or healthy – for any Turk to have.

Not and survive.


	52. Tifa: Barmaid

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><p><strong>52. Tifa: Barmaid<strong>

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><p>Tifa walked into the bar and was nearly knocked over by someone else barrelling out of it. She caught a flash of blonde hair, but that was all before the person was gone.<p>

Antonia was cleaning glasses – an exercise in futility with her permanently grubby cloth. Tifa came over and jerked a thumb over her shoulder. "Patron?" It was early, but not too early. In Midgar it was never too early.

"Nah." Antonia spat into the glass and scrubbed. Tifa was reminded why she hardly ever actually drank anything here, despite being bought drinks every busy night by barflies and guys whose eyes never rose above her collarbone.

Tifa was surprised. "She works here?" The blonde girl hadn't looked old enough to even get a passable fake ID, much less work in a bar.

This place wasn't exactly hot on checking paperwork – one of the reasons Tifa herself had found employment there, but at least she'd looked older than her years when she first landed in the city. Her Nibelheim accent hadn't been chewed away at that point, which had labelled her a hick and encouraged most people to try taking advantage of her naïveté until she gave them a taste of her knuckles. Bartending had been the easiest and, ironically, safest work she could find, and after a bit of practise she was good at it. These days she could mix a cocktail as proficiently as she could throw a punch without breaking her thumb, and had made herself indispensable by throwing out drunkards twice her height and weight. The owner liked her and made sure she never got stiffed on her share of the tips when Antonia felt peeved that a kid half her age was being fast-tracked ahead of her to a managerial position.

The blonde girl had disappeared around the corner. Tifa straightened from where she'd craned back to get a better look through the bevelled glass of the door. Not only did the girl not look old enough to work in the bar, she looked too slender and fine-boned as well – the kind of person for whom words like 'petite' actually meant something. Tifa wondered whether she was a newbie, and was surprised when Antonia shook her head.

"Graduated from the Military Academy last Summer. Worked here the whole way through."

"Really?" Tifa was even more shocked. "I've never worked a shift with her before."

"Never will now, neither." Antonia placed the glass on the shelf behind her and took up another. "She just quit."

A buzz went through Tifa. It wasn't a pleasant sensation. Those who graduated from the Academy went to one of only a few places, and they all came with the Shinra logo attached. Her gaze slid sideways, but the tables were all empty. Barrett had said he might drop in tonight, which meant he'd be there no matter what. There was never any 'might' with Barrett. He wasn't the kind of guy who prevaricated. When you carried the weight of past bad decisions where your arm used to be, you always remembered the value of thinking fast and acting with certainty.

"I didn't think Shinra took on women in their armed forces," Tifa said, prolonging the small-talk to distract herself from what Barrett's visit could mean. Something business or something personal? The former, almost certainly. What interest could Barrett possibly have in her person life?

It wasn't as though he was Tifa's bosom buddy, although they'd moved on from just being allies. Since she joined AVALANCHE they had moved into that grey area beyond allies but not quite friends yet. Biggs and Wedge were the same, although Jessie was a smidge closer by virtue of being the only other female in the bunch. Frederick and Nicholas, veterans leftover from the old incarnation of AVALANCHE, barely even acknowledged Tifa. She wasn't militant enough for them. Few were among the 'new recruits' as they still insisted on calling everyone, no matter how long their tenure. Even Barrett had been forced to rein them in before, and they'd grumbled rebelliously at him.

Antonia was talking again. Tifa snapped back to the present. "They don't," said the grizzled bargirl (which she insisted was her job title, although 'girl' was stretching things more than a little). "She ain't enlisting. Resigned on account of bereavement, she said. Don't see how that kind of thing would make you wanna give up your job, but meh." She shrugged. "Some shit to do with her brother or sister, anyhow. Leaves me shorthanded whichever way you slice it. You'll prolly hafta pull some extra shifts." Her baleful look was a direct challenge for Tifa to say she couldn't.

"Cool," Tifa said instead, not giving Antonia the satisfaction of threatening her with a pink slip while she was still senior enough to do so. "I could use the extra money."

"You planning something special?"

"No, but it's always good to have some kept aside for a rainy day, right?"

"Pfft." Antonia rolled her eyes. "Only time it rains in this city is when someone tosses a bucket of piss outta their window."

Tifa winced. It had been years since she left Nibelheim – 'left' being the loosest possible term for what had happened, and not at all accurate – but sometimes the bleakness of life in Midgar could still shock her. If it hadn't been for her vow to punish Shinra for betraying the deaths of her entire village, she would have either left or shrivelled up from the sheer concentration of misery there. And the fear! She used to question how anyone could choose to remain under the Plate if they didn't have a vendetta rooting them like she did, until she got to grips with the reality that people born in Midgar feared the outside world far more than they feared the dangers all around them. Open skies and a distant horizon with no walls around them were what dark alleys and constant artificial lighting were to a country girl.

Antonia raised her eyes. Accusation worked its way outward from her small black pupils. She blinked too much and sniffed her reddened nose a lot – indications of why she hadn't advanced while Tifa's previously undiscovered business acumen got her skipped ahead. Word was Tifa would be running this bar soon, while Antonia was more likely to be dead if she didn't quit doing Lucid soon. "You gonna stand there all night, or you gonna punch the clock?"

"Sure thing." Tifa kept her voice upbeat. She knew it annoyed Antonia, and it was easier to believe your journey to work hadn't depressed the hell out of you if you play-acted cheerfulness.

The evening passed uneventfully. Tifa pulled drinks and made conversation with those who wanted it. She kept the bar far cleaner than Antonia could be bothered to do, and surreptitiously rewashed all the glasses before using them. There was a piece of broken yellow tooth in one. She washed that glass twice and then stuck it at the back.

When the crowd was beginning to thin and the pall of smoke had got thick enough to be mistaken for a small house-fire, the doorway darkened. Shoulders and scalp scraping the edges, Barrett lumbered inside. He nodded at Tifa, ordered his usual and parked himself at a table in back. Tifa finished serving the guys at the bar and took her break. She brought over Barrett's drink and one for herself.

"You'll ruin your tough guy look if you keep drinking these," she said, placing the orange juice down on his table.

He harrumphed and took a swig, screwing up his face at the sudden bitterness. Tifa sipped hers slower and managed not to make her mouth look like the back end of a cat.

Barrett wiped at his mouth with the back of his good hand. As ever, he didn't beat about the bush. Tifa wondered how much Dutch courage you could get from citrus fruits. "We got a problem."

"We do?"

"You ain't seen no newscast yet?"

"I've been working."

"Big shit-storm went down today. Shinra press conference got itself turned into a platform for 'terrorist speechifying'." He grimaced, and this time it was nothing to do with the juice. "It wasn't pretty. At all. Word on the street is they're gonna be scraping one of the two activists up with a spatula until Yule. The other guy got taken into custody, which means we're fucked."

Tifa wasn't stupid. She used to be, especially when it came to personal relationships, but that was before she held her father's hand as he died and was nearly run through by the world's greatest hero because she didn't use her brains before she acted. She put two and two together and came up with a handful of memories from previous AVALANCHE meetings and a groan. "Nicholas and Frederick finally made good on their threats?"

"Dumb-asses took things into their own hands. Decided to do things their way instead of waiting like we agreed. I knew they was gonna pull something, but I didn't think they'd aim as high as the president's son. Not on their own." He shook his head. His eyes were clouded with various emotions, only a few of which Tifa could name. Anger was in there, but so was grief, as well as a lot of regret. She got the feeling not all of it was because of this. Everyone in AVALANCHE had reasons for being there and memories of things they'd rather forget. Barrett was no exception.

People always underestimated Barrett. They saw his muscles and heard him talk, and they wrote him off as just some macho guy with a pound of fat between his ears. If that were the case, however, he never would have become leader of their tiny cell, or adopted a little girl, or set up a marker in a quiet corner of Sector Seven where he still went to talk to a guy called Dyne.

AVALANCHE wasn't the major operation it used to be. Barrett didn't want it to be, either. The previous incarnation's goals weren't his goals, and the only real similarities were an underlying hatred of Shinra and a desire to protect the Planet from it. Barrett's plans were small-scale out of necessity – they just didn't have the manpower for any major operations, and as Nicholas and Frederick had just proved, trying them inevitably led to disaster. This new version of AVALANCHE had to rely on brains, not brawn, if it was going to affect Shinra in any way – and especially if it was going to make a difference without sacrificing innocents like in Corel. That meant strategy and long-term plans, not headlines and making a stand to an audience only listening to the boom of your explosives, not the explosive words from your mouth.

Tifa watched Barrett for a second, and then leaned across the table to lay her hand over his flesh one. He jumped, made as if to snatch the hand away, but then left it there. He looked between it and her, something else in his eyes that she _definitely_ recognised, but hadn't seen in a long time – not since an angry blond boy left to prove himself and join the very company she was now working to bring down. Cloud used to look at her that way: like he wanted someone to tell him he hadn't screwed up again, but was too proud, or perhaps too scared, to ask for her approval.

"It wasn't your fault, Barrett," Tifa said softly.

"Shoulda been able to do sumthin'," Barrett groused.

"Should've, would've, could've," Tifa said with a shake of her head.

"They weren't bad guys. Nick and Fred … they just got the wrong ideas." The pair had always hated having their names shortened. Maybe that was why Barrett did it, and had kept doing it. It kept them humble – or so he'd thought. There didn't seem much point now.

"You can't rule people's heads and hearts by force." Tifa wondered whether lightning could still strike her down under the Plate. It was difficult to reconcile the mutterings of 'terrorist' and all its connotations with the reasons behind what they were doing. She'd resolved never to sacrifice innocents in their fight against Shinra, and so had Barrett, Biggs, Wedge and Jessie. Barrett in particular was already intimate with the kind of tragedy that came from innocents getting caught in the crossfire, as the little girl he had at home could attest every time she called him Daddy. Nicholas and Frederick, on the other hand, had been firm believers in 'the end justifies the means'. "Nicholas and Frederick were never going to listen to reason, and trying to compel them against their will would've made you as bad as … as President Shinra himself."

Barrett said nothing, just stared into his half-finished juice like it held the answer to the secret of the universe. "We oughta be making plans to rescue whichever of 'em is still alive." His voice held little hopefulness. If Shinra had hold of the survivor after what they'd done, he wouldn't be a survivor much longer. Barrett knew it. So did Tifa, and it made her lungs feel heavy. More death. More tragedy. More of Shinra getting away with whatever the hell they wanted.

She sighed and swirled her own glass, forcing her mind along a different path. She still missed Cloud, in that should've-would've-could've way. The clarity of hindsight made her cringe at how she'd acted towards him when they were growing up in Nibelheim – and how she'd allowed others to act towards him. She'd behaved so poorly, it was a wonder he'd still counted her as his friend at all. She supposed desperation, more than actual liking, had dictated his attachment to her. It was the only way she could justify what had happened after he left. He had cared enough to rescue her from a collapsing bridge as a kid, but written only two letters after arriving in Midgar, and she hadn't heard from him since he wrote he was due to take the entrance exam for SOLDIER in a week's time.

She'd actually gone to find him when she first arrived, thinking to inform him about the tragedy of Nibelheim – as if he wouldn't already know, given the media coverage and the fact his own mother had died in the blaze. Shinra wouldn't be so cruel as to keep that information from him, would they? Actually, the jury would be out on that one for a while. One thing Tifa had learned since seeing the slums, and the predators that prowled them – including several on the company's payroll – was that the cruelty of Shinra knew no bounds.

However, when she first got off the train she'd still been befuddled with grief over losing so much so quickly, and hadn't thought it through. She hadn't thought much of anything through, otherwise why would she have left Master Zangan's protection to strike out on her own? She hadn't been allowed in to see Cloud, but she'd left a heartfelt message and the address of her lodgings. She'd been so certain he would come to see her, it had almost broken her heart a second time when he didn't; until she shook off the disappointment and told herself to get a grip.

Cloud hadn't got in contact. As time passed Tifa had been forced to conclude he'd been so badly treated by Nibelheim that its destruction didn't mean as much to him, with his fancy new life in SOLDIER, as it did to her. Cloud had moved on to better and brighter things. She'd moved on too, though she was still looking for 'bright' under the Plate before she tried for 'brighter' or 'better'.

Antonia slammed a snifter of brandy down on the counter and glared at Barrett's table. The owner of the bar rarely came down to his premises, but he had no love for Shinra either, and it wasn't like Tifa or Barrett ever made it public why they knew each other, or why Barrett kept coming back to this bar even though he didn't drink. Antonia, however, was a loose cannon with a hateful streak that might prove dangerous if she was ever allowed to start firing.

Tifa sighed, glugged the last of her orange juice, and rose to her feet. Her breaks were getting shorter and shorter. If she ever did take control of this place, she'd designate a reasonable amount of time to rest her aching hoofs. And she'd rename the place, too. Seriously, Krap's Bar? _Krap's_?Arnold Krap was three owners ago and nobody remembered him anymore, they just saw the name and thought it was a descriptive typo. The whole place was due a serious overhaul if it wanted to start turning an actual profit.

"Talk to you later, big guy."

"Humph," Barrett replied, but stayed in his corner for a long time after she left, staring at his drink until all the pulp had separated and settled at the bottom of the glass.


	53. Zack: Dragon Slayer

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><p><strong>53. Zack: Dragon Slayer<strong>

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><p>Breaking out of the labs had seemed the most difficult thing in the world at the time. Now Zack could see how foolish he'd been. Breaking out wasn't the problem. Once Hojo was gone, and everyone left behind was convinced Specimen Z was no longer a problem, breaking out had been simple. The hallucinations leftover from jumping out of a tube full of mako didn't <em>help<em>, of course, but at least they didn't hinder either. It actually seemed like the imaginary Angeal led Zack to his Buster Sword, and to the cupboard of spare SOLDIER uniforms when he balked at the stab-wound in Cloud's infantry uniform. Zack wondered why the facility had so many uniforms in storage. Then he decided he actually didn't want to know.

Getting away was the bitch of the matter. And no, there was no other way of putting it, though Zack apologised to the hallucinatory version of his mother who tutted at the edge of his vision as he half-carried, half-dragged Cloud through the skeletal Nibelheim. All the houses had been rebuilt, but none of them filled. Fakery all the way. Brilliant.

The hallucinations faded as time went on, though Zack felt more juiced than he had in a long time. They were _out_. He had _done it_. Just like he'd promised, he had broken them out of those damn labs and set them on the way to real freedom.

Yeah right.

Breaking out wasn't the problem. _Staying_ out was. And staying alive, which didn't always have a lot to do with the Shinra goons no doubt hot on their trail. Zack was spectacularly unprepared for surviving in snowy conditions, never mind surviving them after years in lock-up. Bits of information Cloud had told him when he was still capable of speech came back as they trudged through drifts and along tracks studded with paw prints.

"Nibel wolves, huh? What did you tell be about them, buddy? C'mon, help me out here. I told you how not to get frogged outside Gongaga. Tit for tat, right?"

Luckily they didn't run into any wolves. It took them days to get off the damn mountain, during which Zack's hallucinations dwindled as the excess mako leeched from his system. His head cleared, and he was able to branch away from the basic thoughts of escape and freedom. Survival took over, and with it his SOLDIER training returned. He made sure they didn't starve, dehydrate, or die from basic mistakes that would have had Cloud laughing at him if he'd made them.

"Don't just eat snow for water," he murmured, looking over as if Cloud might answer. "Lowers your core temperature and puts you at risk of hypothermia. I remember you telling me that. I was trying to distract you from your motion sickness in the truck and got you talking about that time you were stranded in the open during a blizzard. You were looking for some neighbour girl's cat, right? And when you were out freezing your ass off, the cat was already home in front of the fire. That story was just supposed to keep your mind off your stomach, and now it's keeping us both alive. See, I told you, buddy; you're not as useless as you always make out."

Talking was as inevitable as ever. At least now Cloud was there, solid and real, instead of trapped behind glass. And when his head was finally clear, Zack realised the enormity of what they'd done, and also what they had to so next.

Midgar. He had to get Cloud to Midgar, and Aerith. If anyone could bring him out of the mako poisoning and rescue his mind intact, she could. The intensity of his faith in her abilities could have stripped chrome from steel. The danger posed by heading for Shinra's headquarters seemed almost negligible compared to the necessity of saving his best friend and making up for the time they'd both spent in captivity. He needed Aerith for Cloud, but he also wanted to see her just for himself. Before they faded, the hallucinations of her were the worst. She dispelled the fear greasing the recesses of his mind, but added to the despair lapping at the edges because he knew she wasn't real.

Go to Midgar, fix Cloud, grab Aerith, and then get the hell away from everything with that damn Electric Power Company logo on it. He could figure out the rest later. For now, those were his goals.

_Never abandon your SOLDIER honour._ And there was the other really bad hallucination. Folded arms and a single extended white wing. Disapproving expression. _Would a SOLDIER run away before all the crises have been taken care of?_

"Take a hike," Zack muttered the way he never would have in real life, busy gauging their position by the stars and wondering whether that helicopter that went over earlier would come back. "You're not even real."

_I taught you better than that._

"Shut up, shut up, shut up, shut up …"

_You're hanging on to your dreams, Puppy, but don't fulfil them at the expense of your honour. One without the other isn't worth it. _Black hair swept back off the angular face. Square jaw. Perfect war hero looks: You Can Trust Me radiating off him in uniform or in civvies on those rare occasions he wore them. Always looked older than he actually was; especially at the end, all streaked with grey and skin the colour of fresh concrete.

Zack shook away the memory. It clattered about inside his skull. Death rattles stayed with you in more ways than one.

_Genesis is still out there_, said the figment.

"How do you know? You're just a product of my imagination."

_Am I?_

"If I answer that I might as well just throw myself off a cliff now. It's a much easier way of splattering my brain, and it'll be over quicker."

_Always with the smart mouth. You're still a SOLDIER, Zack, with all the responsibilities that come with it._

"SOLDIERs are Shinra's flunkies. Shinra sold us out; hurt us worse than … they hurt us. You, me, Cloud – plus who knows how many others?"

_Exactly_.

"Quit being cryptic. You know I always hated that. I'm done with Shinra."

_Being a SOLDIER isn't about who signs your paycheques. It's about what's in here_. A pat to the chest. Big broad hand. Familiar. Grieved for. Gone.

Tears stung Zack's eyes. He told himself it was just the cold mountain air. "You're not real."

_Believe what you want, Zack, but don't forget what I taught you or I really will disappear. You're the proof that I existed. The only thing I did right in my life_. That smile, the real one: a slight twitch of the lips that was a big grin for anyone else. _I have faith in you_. Then the whole image faded, and the frosty tree stump behind it came into focus.

Zack came to a halt to scrub at his face and murmur, "Fuck." Cloud weighed heavy on his shoulder and the back of his neck prickled. "Fuck."

That was the last time he had that hallucination. He wasn't sure whether to be pleased or not.

The mako overload left behind a feeling of being constantly energised, as though Zack was on the biggest caffeine high of his life. Maybe that was what kept the wildlife at bay when he succumbed to those few catnaps he could get away with before anxiety drove him back to his feet. It lasted for weeks, even after they neared the edge of the snow's reach. What had taken only days in trucks had taken far longer on foot – especially evading pursuit from behind and above. Zack had to stick to thickly wooded areas to make it difficult for choppers to track and vehicles to follow; places where creatures lived that even Cloud had thought were extinct. Zack imagined himself lit up like a thousand-watt bulb on a spectrum only animals could see. Like frogs and lizards who changed colour to drive away predators: _Does not taste good, more trouble than trying is worth, so stay away_.

Too bad not all animals paid attention to warning signals.

"You know, I could really get to hate dragons." Zack bit down to stop from yelling in pain at the wound on his side the creature had got in before he realised those many tusks were projectiles.

The big red bull bared its fangs and hissed. It flared its massive wings and beat them once. The gale nearly knocked Zack off his feet. The second beat sent him skidding backwards, legs locked and sword held out in front with the flat to his face. It looked like he was preparing to attack it, but in actuality he was just protecting his eyes from the kicked up debris. Moments later, however, he really did have to attack, as the dragon came at him in a whirl of teeth and claws.

"Can't you just go hunting rabbits like the wolves?" Zack vaulted, pivoted and struck out. He was surprised at his own speed. The Buster Sword bit into the dragon's neck and it roared, but it wasn't deep enough. Its scales were thick and its temper high.

Zack barely saw the tail, plastered in bony spikes, before it whipped out from between the spread wings and hit him. He went sailing through the air to slam into a tree, but was back on his feet in a second. Wow, talk about an improved recovery rate. His back twanged a little, but otherwise he was unhurt.

Or at least he thought so, but the cramp in his middle would have to wait until later. The bull charged again, apparently intent on a Zack Sandwich.

"Sorry, big guy, but I'm not on the menu today."

Using the massive tree's trunk as a launch-pad, Zack twisted around the back, created momentum and flung himself at the dragon at a slightly lower angle. Much as it disgusted him, he was using a move from the simulator in the lab. He bent almost double and at the last second yanked the Buster Sword up so it air resistance against the blade wouldn't slow him. The point dug into the dragon's underbelly and scored a line from chest to groin. It squealed in pain, like a much smaller animal, and kicked out with a hind leg, but Zack was already clear before the blood loosed. His feet and one hand touched down, leaving grooves as he forcibly halted himself.

The dragon's wound, and what came out of it, steamed in the cold air. But instead of dying or running away, it rose on two legs and roared so terribly Zack was convinced any search parties would hear it and come running to investigate the disturbance.

The tail whipped back and forth. Its reach was tremendous. Zack leapt aside.

"C'mon, big guy. No meal is worth this amount of aggro. Just leave and go lick your wounds in peace, okay? Find an elk or something. How about a nice – whoa!"

The tail nearly swiped him.

"Are we really getting into a pissing contest over this? Because I'm sensing this isn't just about lunch anymore. Especially since I think that's your stomach I can see, and it's in no condition to contain lil' ol' me. And by the way, _ew_!"

Sephiroth hadn't had this much trouble with those two Acid Dragons. Less than a minute, that was all. And they were both First Classes? It just went to show the margin was pretty wide even at the top.

Zack abruptly tossed away the memory. What the hell? He couldn't think about that right now. A life or death struggle with an overgrown gecko that needed an attitude adjustment was _not _the right time to clash egos with a dead man.

Was there ever a good time to clash egos with a dead man?

The bull swung its head back and forth. The slitted yellow eyes fastened on something. It growled low in its throat. It was the kind of noise nightmares were made of. That sound would follow Zack into his, for sure.

He groaned. He thought he'd secured Cloud better than that, but the hand and length of visible arm sticking out from behind the protective bank of rocks and bushes meant he must have toppled sideways. It was damned hard to hide a comatose man at the best of times, and this was definitely _not_ the best of times. Not even close.

The bull lumbered at the easier prey. Things dragged beneath it, but it didn't seem to notice. Bull-headed as well, it seemed. Zack dashed forward, but that last move had put him behind the beast, and it was damn fast when it wanted to be.

Well, so was he. Faster than he'd ever been before. Faster than he'd thought _possible_, even for a SOLDIER. Even for a First Class. Even for –

No time left. He struck out. The dragon's left foreleg toppled sideways like a bowling pin. It screamed, but as it pitched it went even closer to Cloud's hiding place. Zack barely felt ground under his feet before he was in the air again. An impossible leap, surely? Apparently not.

_Protect Cloud_, his mind yelled. _Protect Cloud!_

Something warm sprayed in his face. Another squeal, this one ending in a gurgle. He couldn't stop, couldn't let up, had to protect Cloud since Cloud couldn't protect himself. Jump, slash, stab, jump again – was he flying or something? He could see the tops of the trees and the flat red skull below him. He drove down, point first. He flashed back to the journey up to Nibelheim and thought he caught a glimpse of silver hair trailing behind him as he plunged his blade through bone and scales.

For a second Zack disconnected with reality. Then he realised what was going on and grabbed at his conscious mind with both hands. He remembered Helena and the male Turk with the blond hair, all the blood on the snow outside the compound, her eyes staring up at him as she died because he'd been juiced and lost control once before, the silver wire dragging him back – but Cloud was in _danger_ if he didn't _do_ _something_, and where was that damn wire, he needed it to stay focussed, and … and …

And then it was over. Zack found himself standing, breathing hard, dripping purple slime and stinking of gore. The last of the dragon thumped to the ground with a shudder that yanked snow right off the branches of surrounding trees. The hot blood meeting cold air reminded him of the inside of a sauna, except there were no fat Shinra executives discussing cost-cutting here. The Buster Sword pinged in his hand. Zack moved dazedly, marvelling at the scene.

_I did that?_ he wondered. Boy, were the scavengers in for a feast. Actually maybe they could take some of the meat with them if it wasn't poisonous. Who knew when they'd hit a town, or whether it would be safe to go into it if they did? Good thing this wasn't an Acid Dragon, or things could have gotten pretty messy, not to mention inedible. Not that they weren't messy already …

Cloud was fine. Zack gingerly set him upright and spent a moment staring at the vacant eyes. "So even saving your butt from the jaws of death – literally – wasn't enough to make you snap out of it?"

No reply.

"Figures. You missed my moment of glory, Cloud. Man versus Nature, and Man won." Zack sighed. "Ifrit's balls, that sounds like a line from a Shinra promotional leaflet. If I ever say anything that dumb again, you wake up and smack me, okay?"

Cloud stared.

"Okay. Glad we got that sorted out." Zack stood.

His midriff burst into flames.

Not literally, but it might as well have been, such was the intensity of the pain that suddenly burned through his guts and left him feeling nauseous. "Ow! What the …? Oh shit."

Not all the gore on him was the dragon's. Zack cursed up a storm at the dark red flow that led back to a ragged hole, almost black with his own blood. Apparently those spikes hadn't missed him as much as he'd thought. It was testament to how much Hojo's meddling had changed him and his threshold for pain, if he hadn't even noticed what should have been a fatal wound until now, let alone kept fighting and actually been able to take down the dragon while his innards were taking a breath of outside air.

The flames spread. Zack wavered. Something like the snow of TV interference crackled at the edges of his vision.

"No! Not now." He shook his head, as if pure denial would somehow fix him right up so he could keep going. "Only just got out of Dodge … can't quit now …"

His heart beat like a bird in too small a cage. He actually reached out and tried to pull Cloud into a travelling position: _If you ignore the mortal wound it'll just go away, like bogeymen and monsters under the bed …_

It was no use.

Well _duh_.

The snow, at least, cooled the back of his head. He was hot. Not a good sign. Had those spikes and tusks been venomous? Or was this more of Hojo's surprises biting him in the ass? The sky swam in and out of focus and his limbs felt like they were made of stone.

He didn't want to die like this; on his back, with his best friend relying on him and Midgar still not reached. He couldn't think of anything worse that expending all this effort just to get cut down without achieving his goals.

_Hold onto your dreams and your SOLDIER honour. _

A face framed with black hair leaned over him.

"Angeal?" Zack squinted. Was he hallucinating again?

_Protecting your comrades, doing what's right, selflessness, tenacity – those are part of what makes a SOLDIER. But they're not the whole of it._

"Pretty sure you said that when they first gave me to you as a student."

The face leaned closer. Sunlight glinted on glasses. "Hm. So the reports were true. It is you, Commander Fair."

"What?" Zack blinked. Blinked again. Realised it was dark with lids up or down. Realised, also, that he knew more than one person with black hair. It didn't sound like Hojo, though. Clipped and formal, not nasal and arrogant. Plus whoever it was had used his name, instead of referring to him as 'Specimen Z', the way Hojo always did. "Who are…?"

Too late.

Fade to black.

Very black.


	54. Cissnei: Autumnal

A/N: Gosh, it has been a while, hasn't it? Dang ponies claiming my soul ...

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><p><strong>54. Cissnei: Autumnal <strong>

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><p>Autumn. Cissnei was too tired to push away the imagery. Change had hit her, and hit her hard. After seeing Zack for the first time in years, and meeting his parents in Gongaga, she feared whatever next blow fate delivered would strip her of the last of her carefully constructed defences.<p>

She hadn't taken them in; Zack or the comatose blond man with him. Her orders had been clear, and she'd wilfully gone against them. She hadn't recovered the two missing specimens.

But she'd tried. She had even attacked Zack by throwing Rekka at him. Not with enough force or accuracy that he couldn't easily deflect the giant shuriken, but in that instant on the shoreline she had wavered more in the following of her orders than during the entire rest of her career. Everything that had happened had ganged up at once in her brain – all the deaths of her fellow Turks; the culture shock of returning to her old responsibilities after being on the run with Aerith; Aerith herself, plus what the situation with her meant for Zack now … Cissnei's hand had faltered, and not just because she was staring at a dead man, or because her heart was throwing itself against her ribcage in an effort to break free.

Autumn used to be a beautiful time. In her travels with Aerith, Cissnei had gotten to see it in its former glory, in those places where mako reactors hadn't yet poisoned the soil so nothing could grow.

'Poisoning the soil'? Damn, she was beginning to sound like one of those psychotic eco-terrorist groups. She'd have to watch out for that.

But looking out during the journey back to Midgar to make her report, she felt too weary to resist the depression of encroaching wasteland the nearer they got to the city. Grass gave way to bare earth, as if they were in the middle of a drought, despite the rain yesterday. Trees became shrivelled husks and then disappeared entirely. Even the sky seemed to get greyer. She found herself longing for six months ago, and the life she'd left behind.

Except that it hadn't been a real life. She shook loose the dangerous thoughts. Her time on the run had been part of an assignment, not a buffet of alternative lives for her to pick from now she was questioning her own.

Was she questioning her life? Her job? Being a Turk?

No. She couldn't. She couldn't _afford _to.

But was the fear curling in her gut actually about change threatening to take away a façade she was wedded to out of familiarity, leaving the bare bones of her life exposed? Despite whatever problems Shinra ran into, things had always been okay for Cissnei the Turk. She had cash in the bank and an accomplished record of service. She had a succession of bosses who respected and trusted her, two things that didn't come easily for Veld or Tseng. She was still alive, still sane, and knew her own worth. Not many people could say they were intimate with their own value.

Yet as she looked at Zack on that beach, sneaking up behind him like a sniper or a thief, she'd seen something in herself that made her acutely aware of how each breath rasped in her throat: the cobbled together, freelance quality of her existence. She had a job she'd been thrown back into, which no longer felt such a good fit as it used to. She had colleagues who seemed subtly changed into harsher versions of themselves, and she couldn't tell if they really had changed or if they'd always been that way and she'd just grown softer. She worked for a company that took its own people and performed horrific experiments on them like they weren't even human. She had nobody to come home to when she clocked off, if she clocked off and if she came home at all. She had a fading echo of childish laughter for company, and an urge to _take off her suit_ and wear something less restrictive.

Basically, she had a screwed up head, an even more screwed up heart, and nobody to talk to about any of it.

Not that she would have talked to Aerith _anyway_, but just having someone there, available if you wanted to unburden yourself, was better than nothing. It had been a comfort, actually. Guilt and self-doubt were nasty bedfellows who stole the sheets and left you shivering all night long, and never brought you tea of a morning – not even tea that tasted like bitumen dissolved in sugary gerbil pee and milk.

_I can't believe I miss Aerith's terrible tea._

Tabitha Fair's tea had been lovely. She'd served it in a chipped mug that didn't match anything else in her cupboard, and sat across from Cissnei with her husband holding onto her shoulder, her gnarled hand over his. She'd asked about Zack, making pleasant small-talk even as Cissnei tried to evacuate them from their home.

Cissnei knew it was wrong for her not to have corrected the woman when she mistook Cissnei's friendship with their son as a relationship. She should have told them Zack was irrevocably bound to – _for_ – someone else, and that there was far more between those two than between Zack and herself. She _should_ have. She wouldn't have had to give any details that required authorisation, and it would have been the right thing to do. It may even have made the evacuation smoother if they hadn't become so suddenly attached to her. She'd almost been able to see the pair of pleading green eyes in her peripheral vision, begging her to let them know, but instead she'd given in to her own selfishness and allowed Tabitha Fair to press her free hand to her mouth with a squeak of joy.

"You're such a lovely girl, dear," she'd said, taking Cissnei's fingers in her own. Once upon a time Cissnei would have snatched them away, but she'd left them there and let Tabitha squeeze them tight. She couldn't feel it much. The injuries from her early training with Rekka had also left her with extensive nerve damage and scars that necessitated she wore gloves at all times. She could throw projectiles with deadly accuracy, but she couldn't tell they'd bitten into her own flesh until she noticed the bleeding.

Aerith had been shocked when Cissnei first took off the ever-present fingerless gloves. The collection of livid red knots and shimmery purple lines were stomach-churning on a first viewing. Cissnei used to sit on the edge of her bunk, staring at them and wondering how much more Veld would expect her to give in the field if that was what she had to give during training. The proof of her early failures was almost as closely guarded as her real name – she was ashamed of the marks for more reasons than one. They'd been made by a different girl than Cissnei the Turk, and the sight of them made her sullen and embarrassed at their ugliness.

Showing them had been to add to a disguise to keep herself and Aerith unnoticed, since anyone who looked at the scars inevitably looked away again. It had been one of many sacrifices Cissnei had made in the last four years. Yet Aerith hadn't asked, and had actually laid her hand over Cissnei's as they passed a checkpoint on a major highway. Cissnei had been bizarrely grateful for that. Aerith's hand had been cool and dry where she could feel it against the segments of undamaged skin. Acceptance was one of the things Aerith did best.

There wasn't any reassurance in Tabitha Fair's grip, but there was acceptance, and also love and relief. It had to be hard, holding on to love for a son who'd left you and the life you'd built before he'd even finished puberty. The Fairs weren't a wealthy family. They'd scrabbled for what they had, only to find their only child wanted more than a life dug from the ashes of past tragedy.

_Yeah, he went off and dug one from fresh tragedies of his own_. Cissnei had shut her eyes against the unhelpful thought, and so missed what Tabitha said next.

"Huh?"

"I'm so _glad_ he found such a _nice_ girl to settle down with."

"I'm not so nice," Cissnei had tried to protest, meaning to go on about them not settling down together either, but Zack's mother had waved away her words.

"We always worried about him. He never really … fit in around here, but Midgar's so far away, and you hear such stories." She'd shaken her head and beamed. Not just smiled, but _beamed_ with all the motherly love Cissnei had missed out on at the orphanage, but never actually _missed_ until that moment. "I'm sure you're very good for him. You seem the type."

"Type?" Cissnei had said hoarsely.

"Trustworthy. Genuine. I'm an excellent judge of character, dear, and you're definitely a sincere soul. I can tell these things, you know. You seem very … _real._ Like our Zack. True to yourself and those around you. He wouldn't have picked you, otherwise."

In the present, Midgar loomed huge and terrible. Thoughts, memories, doubts, fears, misplaced affections and other emotions swirled inside Cissnei like the world's least drinkable cocktail. And what rose to the top, like scum, was an aching loneliness she'd never felt before – or at least never allowed herself to acknowledge. Not when she returned from Mideel to learn Sandan had been killed and that, with Youhei uncontactable, she was effectively the only female Turk left. Not when she perused the papers in Aerith's box. Not when she heard the hostility in Zack's voice. Not when the admissions she _should_ have made to him clogged in her throat like bile – one about herself and one not.

_Tell him_, the green eyes had seemed to beg. _You have to tell him about what he missed over the last four years. You have to tell him about me. You have to tell him –_

Cissnei had felt guilt, especially when she thought of Aerith's unbreakable belief that he was still alive, but she'd never let herself feel lonely and cut off like the whiny, angsty teenager she'd never been while Veld was around to prevent it.

Turks didn't cling and didn't linger over death.

If she died, would anyone grieve for her? Would she be remembered? Would there be a hole where she used to be, or would she be like Naifu, or Sandan, or Helena – one more name to be swept under the carpet by the Shinra corporate machine?

Dangerous ideas indeed.


	55. Elmyra: Mom

**A/N:** All that time with nothing and then two updates at once? Goodnes gracious! ;)

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><p><strong>55. Elmyra: Mom<strong>

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><p>Elmyra Gainsborough had endured more grief than any one person should ever have to. She'd lost her husband young, and her parents even younger. She lived beneath the Plate in Midgar, in a slum where sunlight was practically a myth and a dying woman tumbling off a train didn't even draw a crowd.<p>

For a brief period, however, she'd been able to believe none of that mattered. A little girl had landed in her lap and called her Mom, and with one blink of those big green eyes all Elmyra's troubles suddenly seemed, if not solvable, then at least endurable. For years she'd climbed the staircase of happiness holding a small hand, thanking each day Aerith was there to stop her falling into despair at the spiritual body-blows she'd received.

At least, until she reached the top and found the staircase led to the edge of a sheer cliff.

She'd been teetering on the cliff-top for nearly five years now, pieces flaking away beneath her feet. The balancing act of not falling off put her between counteracting forces – she wanted to lash out when Shinra came sniffing around, and scream at them that they'd already driven Aerith away, but doing so would be dangerous for all concerned. Visceral satisfaction wouldn't be a fair exchange for the price Aerith would have to pay.

Plus, impossibly, within the ranks of those searching for her absent daughter were also people covering for her. Aerith had somehow managed to find allies even within the company that had killed her real mother, and those allies were willing to risk their own lives to keep her safe. Elmyra admired that talent as much as she feared for what it might mean if even one brick in Aerith's defence came loose. It was a badly stacked wall, full of mismatching bricks and stones. If it did fail, Elmyra was sure everything would come crashing down around them, and Aerith would lose even more than just her own freedom this time.

_Please be safe. Please be safe. Please be safe. _That was Elmyra's mantra the entire first year Aerith was gone, when she was checking off days on her calendar and counting each one as a victory. If anything happened to Aerith, somehow she felt she'd know about it. She wasn't a Cetra, but after living alongside one for so long there was a connection between them Elmyra hadn't even had with her husband.

When she passed the square block of a day ringed in red she redoubled her prayers, wondering whether Aerith's ancestors could hear her. Fervour made her screw up her eyes and hands, murmuring every morning and night for the Ancient bloodline to actually _mean_ something; for it to be _useful_ for once, instead of just bringing pain, grief, the misery of the Planet, and warnings of disaster nobody could do anything about.

_Please be safe. Please be safe. Please be safe. _

Elmyra wasn't sure how Aerith's allies kept Shinra averted for so long. Elmyra was a practical woman who had no head for politics. Those were someone else's survival skills, not hers. All she knew was that sometimes a Turk would come to the door asking for Aerith, and she'd give the same response each time.

"She's not going with you. She's not interested in anything you have to say. Why can't you just leave us alone?"

And each time the Turk would nod and go away again without a fuss. It wasn't like the early days, when they followed Aerith everywhere and alternately tried coaxing, bribing and forcing her to go with them. As she'd gotten older their tactics had become gentler, if gentle was a word that could ever be applied to that bunch of back-stabbing, morally bankrupt thieves and murderers.

Now, however, the entire process seemed more of a formality. It made Elmyra uneasy. She didn't pretend to understand whatever deal Aerith had worked out with these people. Elmyra didn't trust the Turks as far as she could drop-kick them, which was the best way to be with the truly devious. But she had to accept that her curiously mature little girl knew what she was doing in this, as she'd known with previous things Elmyra had considered her too young for until Aerith proved, unequivocally, that she _was_ old enough.

One thing they both agreed on was that it was no longer safe for Aerith to be in Midgar. To that end, Elmyra had stayed behind so as not to arouse suspicion of Aerith's departure, but part of her yearned to pack it all in and go wherever her little girl was. Sometimes a girl needed her mother, even when she was on the cusp of womanhood herself. And sometimes a mother needed her daughter, even if they didn't share DNA.

_Please be safe. Please be safe. Please be safe. _

The years hadn't been kind to Elmyra. She was older now, and had the rickety hunch and shuffling pace of someone who'd lived too long under the Plate. New lines bracketed her mouth, and her eyes had dimmed. She wasn't _old_, but she felt it. A fire had burned lower and lower within her over the past five years. No news was good news, but any news was fuel, and an unstoked fire would eventually burn itself out. Her days now had the repetitiveness of habit, the only splash of colour when she went to Aerith's church to tend the impossible flowers there.

"Did I ever really understand you?" she asked one day in Autumn. She knew it was Autumn more than anyone else in Sector Five. It didn't make her feel superior, just tired. Everyone else had given up tracking seasons. Some had even given up checking whether it was day or night. Under the Plate it was always a depressing twilight.

Elmyra sat back on her heels and surveyed the tiny garden. She sold the flowers the way Aerith used to, but not often, in case anyone noticed the missing flower girl more than they should. Also, she just liked keeping the flowers to herself. Tending them made her feel closer to Aerith, just like going into her bedroom and curling up on her comforter. Sector Five had closed around them both, shielding them without asking too many questions Elmyra wasn't willing to answer, but you could never be too careful when it came to wagging tongues.

"I think maybe you were always apart from me," Elmyra murmured. She talked to the flowers as if they were a telephone that could beam her words into Aerith's head, wherever she might be. "A little or a lot, there was always a piece of you that didn't belong to me. Although I guess, in a way, you were never really mine at all, so the piece was a pretty big one. You were on loan to me for a while. That's how it felt, at least. Like an overdue library book or something." She chuckled at her own words and shook her head. "Gaia, but I come up with some sappy nonsense sometimes."

"I don't think it's sappy."

Elmyra froze. She was on her knees, bending forward over the flowers, but suddenly she couldn't move. Her thigh muscles started to ache. Her stomach clenched. Still, she didn't so much as twitch.

Few people ever came here. The only real visitor was that black woman; the one Aerith had befriended from a brothel, of all places. Kuchibeni and Elmyra weren't friends. They regarded each other warily, even now, but they had a mutual understanding whenever one of them came here to find the other already there. The church was a place for truces, not conflict.

But Kuchibeni had a distinctive speech pattern, and this wasn't it. Neither was it her smoky alto behind Elmyra.

"I think it's really nice, actually. But didn't the only library in the sectors get torched years ago?"

Elmyra straightened. Held her breath. Turned.

Her heart beat so hard it felt like it had swapped sides.

Aerith smiled. "Hey, Mom. Miss me?"


End file.
